


Interlude for a Red Hood

by Tintinnabulation_of_the_Bells



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Angst, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Major Character Injury, Missing Scene, Post-Red Hood and the Outlaws #25, Protective Dick Grayson, Protective Roy Harper, Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) Issue #25: Starting or Ending, Red Hood and the Outlaws Annual 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24766450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tintinnabulation_of_the_Bells/pseuds/Tintinnabulation_of_the_Bells
Summary: Batman came a lot closer than he ever realized to breaking his code that night, but with the help of a friend and maybe a semi-estranged brother, the Red Hood might pull through. In the meantime, Jason is unconscious, Roy is desperate, and Dick is just plain confused.Basically, my own slightly self-indulgent version of the time between RHATO #25 and Annual 2 to add to the pile because why not?
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Roy Harper & Jason Todd
Comments: 59
Kudos: 449





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first DCU/Batman/Red Hood fic, but I've really fallen over the deep end in the past few months and I've read way more than I probably should have given the fact that I'm in grad school. It was only a matter of time before reading became writing. That being said, I am still working my way through the comics (so many of them!) and there are eight zillion different timelines out there, so it's inevitable that some things will not fully line up with the fully history/current incarnation of the characters. Nevertheless, I tried to keep things relatively consistent with the current RHATO comics/other comics. Except Ric Grayson. We don't talk about him.

“Jason, stay with me.”

Someone is moving him. He can feel their hands on his neck, at his left wrist. Then someone touches his right wrist, lifts his right arm, and oh god, please god don’t do that he’s going to—

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Jaybird.”

The hands move away from his arm and for a moment, there is no contact. Still, something is rumbling or vibrating beneath him, and it’s just enough to rattle his chest and stop his breath in his throat with the pain that crackles up his spine. He wants to see, wants to understand what is happening and why it feels like someone took one of Alfred’s potato mashers to his ribcage, but it’s difficult to open his eyes. One of them aches fiercely in its socket, part of a chorus of aching bones in his face, but the other flutters open just enough for him to see red.

Red like his mask. Red like his friend.

“Roy,” he whispers, and amid the rumbling, he hears a brief, sharp exhalation of air. Roy’s never this tense.

“Yeah, Jaybird, it’s me. Can you keep your eyes open?”

Jason’s eyes are already closed, but he tries to keep his ears more attuned to the world. Listen, he orders his brain. Know your surroundings. It’s one of the first things he learned as a child in Crime Alley, and all of his years since have only hardened his instincts. Sight is just one of the senses, and losing sight is no reason to lose focus.

The jackhammer pounding away in his head, on the other hand…

He drifts, half conscious and afloat, but not so far gone that he can’t feel the pain of each jolt that shakes his body. He decides at some point that he must be in a car. _Batmobile_ , his mind supplies, remembering the days when a patrol gone sour would end with him curled up next to Bruce in the car, one of Bruce’s hands on his shoulder for comfort. His mind entertains the thought for a short second before reality bites back; it’s a cold comfort that he’s still aware enough to realize the folly of his first instincts.

The car skids to a halt, and Jason can’t restrain a sharp groan as his seatbelt shoves against his chest. He’d bet his whole second life that some of his ribs are broken. The agony threatens to drown out the rest of his awareness, but he yanks himself back to earth just in time for someone to touch him again, more gently this time, but still with enough pressure to scald his nerves. Coming back to earth was a mistake. Coming back to Gotham was a mistake. Coming back to life…

“Jason, Jason, hey buddy.” It’s Roy again. “Jay, do you think you can walk?”

_No_. “Yes,” he mumbles, and his jaw aches for his effort.

“Doesn’t really matter, I guess,” says Roy, and then his voice softens with a touch of what sounds like pity. “This is probably going to hurt.”

Then Roy yanks him up from the car, and Jason’s sure for a moment that he’s died again. His brain pounds against his skull and white flashes across his blacked-out vision. Had he drowned? Is that why everything filters to his ears as if he were underwater? Figures. The last time he died, it was in a blazing inferno. Why not go out by water the second time around, just to shake things up?

“Jay, Jay, Jaybird, come on, you’ve got this, I know you’ve got this.”

Roy’s voice filters through to him, and it’s almost comical how Roy thinks his words can fix anything right now. Jason can’t really _do_ much of anything right now, much less “get” whatever Roy is asking him to do. His foot scrapes against gravel, and his knee hurts, his hip hurts, but still not as much as his head. His arm dangles in the breeze, and each time it thumps against his body, he descends to a new layer of hell. He’s sure he’s screaming, or worse, whimpering like a small child, but he honestly couldn’t tell. So much for his awareness.

It takes almost all of his remaining reserves, his last grain of hard-won, iron-tested willpower, to open one eye and glimpse a dark, abandoned alley, a small rundown building with weeds and vines clinging to cracked concrete with as much tenacity as Jason is using to maintain his own hold on consciousness. He doesn’t recognize this place, which is odd, because he knows every inch of Gotham, even the places that the sunlight has forgotten. Especially those places.

He closes his eyes again, allows Roy to drag him towards this strange hovel as he halfheartedly twitches his right leg forward in a semblance of walking. His left is too much trouble to even feign an attempt. He feels Roy’s fingers tighten their grip on his side in order to keep him upright, but the pressure hurts. Roy mutters something about Jason being too damn tall and muscled for his own good, and the corner of Jason’s lip twitches. Then Roy stumbles, and Jason pitches forward, and for a moment his world goes black.

He cracks his eye open and sees only shadows looming before him, but he thinks he can just make out the outline of a chair. He blinks again and the world flips, and he knows somehow that he’s no longer upright and then somehow the change in position, in the pull of gravity rams a railroad spike through his eye socket. This time, he hears his scream.

He blinks again, and there’s a soft light overhead, casting Roy’s head in a soft halo. Roy is still talking, never knows how to shut up, but he doesn’t appear to be talking to Jason anymore. Maybe he cracked his head open too, and he’s talking to himself in a fit of delusion. There’s rustling, clattering, and a frantic curse as something topples to the ground. Jason wants to laugh, wants to tell Roy to keep it together because he sure as hell is falling apart. He moves his lips, tastes blood when they crack open, but perseveres past the iron in his mouth and the swelling in his throat. “Roy,” he whispers, hoping his ragged voice can pierce through Roy’s panic. “Roy.”

“Jason,” says Roy, and he spins around on the heel of his foot. His new position exposes more of the light to Jason’s eye, and he has to close it against the fresh wave of pain it incites. He sinks his head back, and realizes he can sink back, that’s he’s lying on something soft. Whatever it is, it smells of must and grime, but those smells are almost a comfort to him. They remind him of nights spent curled next to his mother, before the cancer, before the drugs, before he was old enough to understand that his father was not a good man.

“Jason,” says Roy again. “Jaybird, please stay with me. Please don’t let him get the best of you.”

For a moment, Jason can claim complete blissful ignorance of what Roy is talking about. The wave of realization, when it comes, knocks him back as hard as any one of Bruce’s fists, puts a halt to his breathing with just as much precision as any of those gut punches that seemed to temporarily paralyze his diaphragm. He’s not sure if he’s breathing, not sure if the damage is physical, because for all he knows, something has shifted inside his broken chest. Regardless of the cause, the effect is physical, and Roy is shouting at him, pleading with him to breathe, damnit, just breathe.

After a minute, two minutes—he couldn’t tell you how long—he releases his breath. There’s a sharper ache at his side now, more acute, and he struggles to lift his left hand across his body to tamp it down. When he gets there, his fingers land on cloth and skin that is wet and warm.

“Roy,” he says, and there’s no use holding back now, because this might be the last thing he ever says. It definitely will be if he can’t alert Roy to the issue at hand. “Roy, I think I—

His fingers land on something that is sharp and jagged and exposed, and finally, finally, the searing across his chest puts him out for good.

Roy watches in horror as his best friend’s body falls slack across the old mattress. He’s not sure if it’s just the dim lighting in his ratty, poorly kept safehouse, but for a long, long moment, he thinks that Jason looks dead.

Then Jason’s chest moves in a slow, stuttering fashion, but it moves nonetheless and Roy thanks every god of every religion in the galaxy for this second chance.

It’s a second chance that’s quietly ticking away, just like the first time Jason died. Roy knew from the moment he saw Jason that this case was so far out of his league, even Kori would have trouble reaching it, flight power and all. If Jason were an animatronic or a robot or anything not made of flesh and blood, then Roy would be able to fix him in a heartbeat. As it is, he’s always been terrible with anything beyond the most basic first aid. Stop wounds from bleeding. Set broken bones, clean everything to prevent infection. This, he knows. He doesn’t not know what to do if he’s afraid that stopping the bleeding might just stop Jason’s lungs from working. Beneath the gash on Jason’s side lies the exposed bone of a rib that is certainly broken, and he’s just not sure what he can do that won’t kill his best friend.

Gulping, he focuses on what he can do. He’d called an old, old friend the moment he’d been able to lay Jason down on the mattress. Friend might be a strong word—she was primarily Ollie’s friend, but she knew him through his time as Oliver’s sidekick, however ill-fated it was. He wasn’t even sure if she would pick up, but once she did, he made sure to express the true depths of his desperation to her, begging her to come save his friend’s life, if not for him, then for simple human decency. He knows she’s on her way now, but until then, the most he can do is triage.

ABC, he thinks. Airway, breathing, circulation. Bruising lines Jason’s throat, a gift from Batman’s chokehold. It’s not the primary concern. Jason still breathes, but it’s not without effort and pain. He’s not sure how much longer it will last. Circulation—circulation maybe he can help. He can’t press against the wound on his side, but the wound on his head is still bleeding freely across his scalp, drenching his gray streak a morbid crimson. It almost hides how hideously bruised his face is, almost hides how the swelling around his eye threatens to engulf it entirely. Almost.

He knows head wounds bleed a lot, so he takes a towel from the safehouse bathroom and presses down hard against Jason’s temple. The lines of pain around Jason’s face deepen, but he does not awaken, and Roy’s not sure if he’s grateful or terrified. Probably both.

He settles in for a period of restless waiting. The safehouse he picked lies on the outskirts of Gotham, just beyond the usual territory of Batman’s patrol. He’d picked for its balance between distance from the scene of the crime and its proximity to medical help. If he’d ventured further, he’s not so sure Jason would have survived the trip. Unfortunately, Gotham wasn’t his home the way it was for Jason, and his options for location were limited. He hadn’t visited this location in months, not since he, Jason and Kory all made a stop in Gotham along their journey. His first aid kit looks woefully insufficient in the face of Jason’s needs. Dust coats the sparsely furnished room, and Jason occupies the only bed.

He checks Jason’s pulse every few minutes and listens as labored breath after labored breath emerges from Jason’s mouth. The wound on his side continues to bleed. A puddle now sits just beneath the bed.

When the door cracks open, Roy’s far closer to tears than he’s been in a long, long time. Not since rehab. Olivia Olsen surveys the room—the musty air, the grime, Roy’s desperation—and whistles. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Speedy?”

He can’t even bother to flinch at the nickname. She hasn’t changed one bit in personality, even if her hair is grayer and her wrinkles a little deeper in her pale face. “My friend, he—he’s in bad shape. Really bad.”

“You don’t say,” she says. Roy doesn’t reply. Instead, he pivots his body to allow greater access to the man beneath him. Olivia walks briskly towards them and settles her stuffed medical bag on the floor next to the bed. She takes an assessment of Jason’s state, checking the ABCs that Roy had already done, but also palpating along his chest and head. When she grimaces, Roy’s heart jumps.

“This man needs a hospital,” she says grimly.

Roy shakes his head. “Too risky.”

She snaps her bag open. “It’s not a question of risk. If he doesn’t get properly treated, he could die.”

“Can’t you just—

She cuts him off. “Unless you have an x-ray machine, a CAT scan and an operating room, then no. I’m not a stranger to field surgery, but I do not have the equipment here that I need. Based on my initial assessment, there’s a decent chance of a skull fracture and potential brain swelling. His orbital bone is fractured badly, and if it’s not handled well, he could lose his eye. Not to mention everything else below his head”

Roy wishes that Bruce fucking Wayne could be in this room right now, if only so he could see what he’d done to his son. And so Roy could punch his teeth out.

As if sensing his distress, Olivia softens her approach, but the same steel lies beneath her words. “I have a friend at a smaller hospital, community, local. It’s close enough to here. Once we’re there, I promise I will lead his treatment and use whatever name you need me to use. But if you do not let me do this, then I cannot help your friend.”

In the end, what choice does Roy really have?

“Fine,” he says. “Fine, but we need to hurry.”

“I’m going to stabilize him as best as I can first,” she says, then rifles through her jacket pocket and emerges with something metallic. “You get the car started. I’ll need you to drive, and I’ll need your help transporting him there.”

Roy doesn’t hesitate. He snatches the key and sprints outside the building. Olivia’s car sits just next to the old clunker he’d hotwired in his haste to get the hell out of dodge. It’s a little larger than the stolen vehicle but far from the ambulance that Jason realistically needs. He has the engine running in a few seconds, and then he busies himself spreading out a blanket on the back and removing clutter from the floor.

When he returns inside the safehouse, Olivia is working efficiently to prepare Jason for transport. He already has bandages on his chest and head and a splint on his arm. He watches as she ties a makeshift sling around his neck and carefully settles his arm in the fabric. Then she looks up at him like she’d felt his gaze on her while she worked. “You’ll need to carry him.”

He nods in silent assent and reaches down for his friend. His hands slip gently beneath Jason’s back and knees, and in one smooth motion, Jason is contained in his arms. Jason stirs a little at the movement, his one eye twitching, but he remains unconscious. Roy carries him all the way to the car, where he settles him in the back next to Olivia.

“I gave him a very mild sedative,” says Olivia. “No need for him to move around on the ride over.”

Roy guns it down the street. If Olivia objects to the handling of her car, she remains silent. Instead, she speaks only to instruct Roy on where to turn or to mutter something to herself as she monitors Jason’s condition. The drive takes all of twenty minutes, shorter than the ride from the rooftop to the safehouse, but it feels longer. When he finally pulls into the entrance of the hospital, the sight of it offers little comfort. Smoke and age have stained and darkened its brick exterior, and several of the lights on the “emergency room” sign flicker. This late at night, the hospital is abandoned except for those most desperate for help. People like them.

He doesn’t even wait for any of Olivia’s instructions. He picks up Jason’s limp body from the backseat of the car, grunting beneath his weight, and half runs to the sliding doors of the ER.

“Help!” he says. “I need help!”

A combination of his frantic tone and the blood still coating Jason’s face and side grab the attention of the triage nurse. He directs him to one of the beds at the side, and he proceeds on instinct.

Olivia’s hand at his shoulder stops him in his path. “I need Dr. Zedecke right now,” she tells the nurse firmly.

“Dr. Zedecke is—

“Tell her Dr. Olivia Olsen is here, and she’ll come.” She straightens her spine. “If she doesn’t, then we’ll talk.”

The nurse eyes her skeptically, but ultimately acquiesces. She returns to her booth to page Dr. Zedecke as Oliva guides Roy towards one of the back-corner beds.

“Keep it together, Speedy,” she mutters underneath her breath to him. “You’re better than this. Just follow my lead.”

Once Roy sets Jason on the bed, Olivia turns to action. She uses scissors to cut apart the sling and then moves on to his shirt. Finding the fabric of Jason’s body armor resistant to her scissors, she takes a knife from her medical kit and slices open his shirt first vertically, then once more horizontally through his sleeves until she can lift the pieces of shirt away and expose his chest.

Roy gasps. Bruises mottle Jason’s entire torso, creating a horrific rainbow across his skin. Blood has already seeped through the bandage on his right side, but there are other smaller cuts and scrapes across his body, almost like an awful case of road rash. The bruising extends up past his chest and over to his right shoulder, which Roy can now see is displaced from its joint. Based on the swelling, he doesn’t even want to begin to imagine what other damage lies beneath. When Olivia moves down to his legs, cutting away his pants as she had done with his shirt, Roy feels almost ill. Something is wrong with Jason’s hip—the joint is deformed—and his knee is already threatening to rival his shoulder in swelling.

He knows Jason’s been hurt before—they all have—but this, this feels personal. Batman knew what he was doing when beat Jason. He decided exactly how much pain to inflict on his son.

The sound of a curtain drawing back tears him from his thoughts.

“Olivia? What on earth are you doing here?”

Roy spins around to see a woman who he assumes is Dr. Zedecke, and his surprise almost makes him forget his desperation for a moment. She’s young, barely older than Jason in all likelihood, and nearly as tall. Her locks are knotted in a twist above her head, only adding to her height. She also speaks with a British accent, something Roy would never have expected in a place like this in Gotham. You only came here if you were born here, tied to the city like Jason always would be.

“Lenore,” says Olivia, brushing past Roy to greet her friend with a brief handclasp. “Lenore, I need your help with one of my friends. He’s…it’s similar to what you did with Oliver Queen last year.”

Lenore’s jaw opens in mild shock, but much to Roy’s admiration, she regroups herself quickly enough. She nods stiffly and takes her place at Jason’s bedside.

“I need only people you trust here,” continues Olivia. “I can help too, but no one comes near this man that you don’t know, okay? And we need to make sure he ends up in a private room with his records altered. I’ll bring in my own people to keep this scheme afloat, but we don’t have time right now.”

Lenore stands and snaps her gloves sharply across her hands as she pulls them on. “You’re right, we don’t. His blood pressure is low and breath sounds on the right are decreased.”

“There’s head trauma too,” adds Olivia. “He’s going to need a CT scan.”

“Bloody hell, Liv, where do you find these people?”

Olivia jerks her chin at Roy with a grimace. “They just seem to find me.”

Lenore eyes him carefully, and he can feel her gaze sweeping over his body from head to toe. She’s sizing him up like he would size up any adversary. He holds his ground.

“Fine,” Lenore says at last. “Get him on a gurney and I’ll get a team to x-ray and have another one on standby at the operating room. You’re staying with him and me at all times—I don’t know what he’s involved in, but if someone starts asking questions, I will not be the one answering them.’

“Have I ever let you down?”

Lenore’s mouth twitches in an almost-smile. “The normal rules don’t apply here.”

Lenore leaves them at brisk pace, and before Roy’s aware of what’s happening, Olivia has procured a gurney and brought it over to Jason’s bed. Roy just stands there, taking in Jason’s still rising chest, until Olivia clears her throat.

“I’ll need your help transferring him,” she says.

Roy’s cheeks burn—he knows they’re turning red. “Right, of course.”

Together, the two of them lift Jason from the bed to the gurney, easing him down carefully. Olivia checks his pulse and his pupil reactions while Roy gently settles Jason’s arm across his chest, mindful of the fingers which are now swelling and bruising as much as the rest of him. Jason frowns and for a moment, Roy thinks he’s going to wake up, but the moment passes and leaves him just as quiet and vulnerable and _un-Jason_ as before. He hates the blood drying brown across Jason’s white streak, so he takes a lock in his hand and tucks it away from view.

“He must mean a lot to you.”

Olivia’s words startle him back into the present. “He’s my best friend.”

Even after everything that happened to them, the way everything ended, that has never stopped being true. Jason is the one person he trusts completely, and he thinks—hopes—Jason returns the favor.

Olivia nods. “What’s his name?”

Roy only has to think for a second. “Jason Peters.”

“Is any of that real?”

Roy hesitates, but finally decides to answer. “His first name is.”

“Good. Now I know what he’ll respond to.” Olivia pauses at the sound of someone calling her name. “That’s my cue. I’ll let you know when we’re done. Fair warning, it might take a while. Maybe use the time to catch up with another friend?”

And with that, she’s gone behind the doors, Jason in tow, leaving Roy utterly alone in this fluorescent hellscape of a hospital. He resigns himself to a long night of waiting in a shitty chair where even the air reeks of bleach and neglect.

Catch up with another friend. He huffs out a sad laugh. The only friend Olivia knows is Oliver, and maybe she thinks that now would be a good time for him to rekindle their connection. Whatever Oliver told her, it must have softened the story, because she didn’t seem to understand how final their severance was. The suggestion does give him another idea, though. Another old “friend” whose bridge is, if not burnt, then smoldering. Someone who might be the only person that he knows still cares about Jason as much as he does, even if their relationship carried as many painful memories as fond ones.

Roy pulls out his phone and calls Dick Grayson.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the positive reception on the first chapter! I feel I should note that while this does explore the aftermath of the comic, it isn't explicit Bruce-bashing, per se. I'm hoping it will reflect the perspectives of several people involved, all of which will differ according to their histories and outlook on life. 
> 
> Also, this is a quick update. Others might take a little longer. I have most of it written (18k out of an expected 20k or so) so updates shouldn't be too far apart, but they might take a little longer since I still have to finish writing and polishing the end and I want to make sure that all of my plot continuity lines up with the final pages.

Dick allows himself a small groan as he disables the last of the security on his bedroom window. It’s a pain in the ass to deal with every night after patrol, but he’ll never sleep with anything less. Besides, he can hardly be seen strolling up to his main door with his Nightwing uniform on. People in this apartment building keep to themselves—it’s part of the reason why he chose the place—but frequent Nightwing sightings would draw immediate suspicion. Sometimes he changes into civilian clothes before coming back, clothes he’s stashed at strategic points throughout the city, but tonight he just wants to be back home sooner rather than later. He’s coming off a long week of shifts at the BPD and a long night of patrol where no one had been truly dangerous, just annoyingly stubborn. Like cockroaches who had chosen petty crime has their profession.

He strips immediately after resetting the security on the window and has the shower running to heat up before he’s even switched on the bathroom light. One of his fights had taken him into a dumpster this evening, and while he’s unharmed from the encounter, he reeks, even by vigilante standards. He lingers in the shower longer than he normally would. With the day off tomorrow, he can sleep in as long as he needs to.

It’s not until he sits down on his bed, towel wrapped around his waist, that he checks his phone. People who need to reach him urgently as Nightwing use the comms, and people who don’t know him as Nightwing don’t need him urgently this time at night. No one blames civilian Dick Grayson for not responding to a text at three in the morning. Still, it’s a good habit to check just in case someone does need something. If they need him too early in the morning, he’ll just pretend to ignore them.

What he does not expect from his phone is five missed calls from Roy Harper and a voicemail. No one uses voicemail anymore unless they’re like Alfred who deems texting a more vulgar form of communication, and he and Roy haven’t been buddy-buddy in years. The only reason Roy had reached out to him in the past few years was because of Jason, but Jason wasn’t with Roy or Kory now. He’d found that Amazonian warrior who towered over both of them (unsurprising; Jason always liked women who could pin him down with the flick of a wrist) and Bizzarro, and the three of them were off doing…something. He doesn’t follow Jason’s movements as closely as Bruce.

Still, five calls is alarming, and so is a message from Roy Harper, so he holds the phone to his ear and presses play on the voicemail.

“Dick, whenever you get this, I need you to come to St. Margaret’s hospital in Gotham immediately. It’s Jason. Don’t look at the news or listen to the radio. Don’t call your family. Call me if you need to, but do it from the car so you’re not wasting time. I need to explain everything to you in person.”

All of Dick’s exhaustion vanishes, replaced by adrenaline and a thought-stream racing faster than the Flash himself. There are a thousand possibilities to consider; Roy could be telling the truth, of course, but Roy could also be in danger, and someone could be trying to reach Dick Grayson or Nightwing through him, a sort of hostage situation. It’s not the most likely of scenarios, but he’s lived through too much to not be a little paranoid. If Roy is telling the truth, then that still leaves another thousand questions. Why shouldn’t he watch the news or call his family? Why are they at St. Margaret’s, one of Gotham’s most dilapidated hospitals who barely kept their backup generators operational.

Dick’s in his car five minutes later, dressed in his BPD sweats and hair still dripping water onto his shirt, and the moment he reaches the highway he calls Roy with one hand on the steering wheel.

“Are you on your way?” says Roy immediately, not even sparing a second for a greeting.

“Yes,” says Dick.

“Good,” says Roy. “I’ll explain everything when you—

“Before I step inside that building, I need to know this isn’t a trap, that you’re not being held by some rogue who’s about five years late to the party and thinks that you and I still work together so he can use you to draw me in.”

Roy swears on the line, and Dick feels a little bad that he’s basically implied that he wouldn’t try to save Roy, which isn’t at all true, but the whole situation is too weird for the moment, and weird in their line of work leads to death or pain. A lot of pain.

“I swear on Kory’s life, this isn’t a trap.” Dick’s heart jolts. Even after all these years, after Kory up and dated Roy Harper and maybe Jason (he’s not sure on that last one) and Dick moved on and dated Babs until he didn’t, Kory occupies a section of his heart available only to a select few. Roy knows this, and Dick knows that Roy had cared about Kory deeply as well, so for him to invoke her specifically, this is as good a guarantee as he’ll get over the phone.

Roy won’t tell him more over the phone, that much is clear, but Dick needs to know the answer to one more question. “Is Jason okay?”

A moment of silence, then the sound of Roy gulping hastily over the phone. “I don’t know.”

Dick floors the gas pedal and doesn’t let up until he reaches the hospital.

Roy meets Dick outside the hospital, and the first thing Dick notices is blood, huge splotches of it, staining Roy’s pants and hoodie sleeves and dried to an ugly, iron-filled orange-brown.

Roy grabs Dick’s arm and yanks the two of them inside, down one of the hallways, and Dick hisses, “What are you doing?”

“Getting us to a place where we can talk,” says Roy shortly. He pulls them into an empty room, and it’s a testament to the state of the place that no one has stopped or questioned the two strange men parading into the employee-only section well past reasonable visiting hours. Roy slams the door shut and practically shoves Dick onto the metal chair next to the empty bed.

“Jason tried to kill Penguin,” says Roy bluntly.

Dick’s mind whirs, trying to link this new horrifying detail into the rest of the threadbare patchwork of a story he’s assembled in his mind, mostly from guesses made during the long drive.

“He didn’t succeed?” Dick presumes.

Roy shrugs. “Dunno yet. He’s in a hospital too, Gotham General. Last I heard he was still alive, but it’s not clear he’ll stay that way. Not really the most important point here.”

“It’s not?” Since when is the Penguin being alive not a vital consideration?

“No, what matters is that Jason did it on national tv, and your daddy Wayne sure as hell thought he succeeded based on everything he did afterwards.”

The patchwork in his mind collapses into shreds before coalescing into a new tale, this one more horrifying than even the worst scenarios he’d envisioned.

“I’ll give Batman one thing,” says Roy grimly, “he certainly knows how to beat a man into submission.”

“What did he do?” asks Dick. He means for it to come out normal, but his voice rasps and breaks on the last word, because he knows Batman’s capabilities better than anyone. Despite what Jason believes, there are things worse than death, and there is a limit to Batman’s self control.

“Beat the shit out of Jason.” Dick flinches at Roy’s flat tone. “I had to pull the man off of him and hightail it out of there. I called an old friend to help, a doctor, but she said Jason needed a hospital. A real one?”

“So you chose here?” Dick asks incredulously.

“She has another friend here, someone she trusts. And Batman exiled Jason from Gotham. This was as far as I could get him without killing him en route.”

Dick leans back in the chair, hands folded into his lap. “That bad?”

“Olivia—the first doctor I mentioned—she said he had a fractured skull and a collapsing lung. A lot of other stuff too, but yeah. That bad.”

A part of him—a part of him he will never indulge, especially not in front of Roy—wants to break down right there in the lurid hospital lighting. All Dick has _ever_ tried to do since Jason’s return is find a way to bring his brother back into the family. At first, he viewed his actions as a type of atonement; while he never blamed himself for Jason’s death as Bruce had, he knew he’d still failed his brother. He’d ignored Jason for large stretches of Jason’s time as Robin, back when his feud with Bruce still tainted every association with Batman and Robin and the manor itself. Alfred hinted once that Jason could have used Dick as a true older brother, someone to share the burden of being Robin and to model a non-lethal form of justice as Jason began to question some of Batman’s methods. No, he wasn’t responsible for Jason’s death, but he’d never been there for his brother in life either. He’d even missed the funeral—unknowingly of course, but just another log for the smoldering flame of guilt.

Jason, true to his nature, never made Dick’s attempts easy. Nearly killing Tim and Damian, installing himself as a crime lord and drug kingpin, murdering criminals with chilling brutality—all of this should have driven a permanent wedge between Jason and the rest of the family. It nearly did between Bruce and Jason. But the past two years, things had been, if not easy, then easier. Jason refrained from murder even if he still engaged in excessive violence and crime by vigilante standards. Jason and Bruce reached a truce, and while Dick wasn’t sure either one would ever truly forgive the other, they’d found a way to coexist and to share a few moments as a family. Never for long but there, nonetheless.

And now Jason had maybe killed someone, and Bruce had beaten Jason maybe to death as well. Dick prayed not, but the universe liked to be cruel, and wouldn’t it be the sickest of ironies if Bruce broke the backbone of his moral code for Jason, just not in the way Jason ever wanted? If Bruce killed Jason, Dick knew it would shatter their family irreparably.

As it was, with Bruce exiling Jason from Gotham and Jason back to his killing ways, that family might have already been damaged beyond repair.

A thought occurred to him. “Where are Artemis and Bizzarro? Weren’t they travelling with him?”

Roy shakes his head. “No idea. There was—there was a spaceship over Gotham, until suddenly there wasn’t, and I didn’t find any sign of them there, but I uh, I haven’t really been looking very hard either.”

Another unanswered question for the night, but as Roy had pointed out, not the most urgent.

He slumps further back into the chair.

Roy sighs. “I’m sorry for dragging you out here, but I know I’m going to need some help here regardless of what happens, and you’re the only person from your happy little family besides Jason that will pick up my call and the only person I trust enough not to ship Jason off to the police at a moment’s notice.” He eyes Dick carefully. “I can count on that, right?”

Dick’s not honestly sure what to think—he is part of the police before, after all, and Jason attempted murder on national television—but Roy knows Dick well enough to know that Jason’s survival will always come first. Everything else is negotiable.

“For now, yeah.”

Dick knows Roy’s filing away that answer for later. It’s going to be a delicate dance between the two of them, three if you count Bruce who will be sure to try to track down Jason to make sure he’s left Gotham. Four if you count Jason, who is sure to have his own opinions once he’s aware enough.

Roy stands up from where he’d perched against the lip of the hospital bed. “Look, I’ve been sitting on my ass in this place for the past four hours, and I need some coffee. Olivia has separate room for us to wait in, part of the hospital that’s not really open now strictly speaking. It’s where Jason’s going to be once he’s out of surgery. I’ll take you there and then grab the caffeine. Gotta be some coffee somewhere in this place.”

Dick hopes so for both their sakes. He allows Roy to lead him to the empty hospital room, one of many along a hall that very clearly was vacant. As shoddy a hospital as St. Margaret’s was, they might actually have a chance of keeping Jason’s whereabouts hidden from Batman in this dump.

Once Roy leaves, Dick pulls out his phone and starts reading the news. He watches the video clip—it already has several hundred thousand views on YouTube—and finds the latest update on Penguin’s condition. Still alive. Still attempted murder. The video clip is exactly as awful as he imagined, and he wants to shake Jason awake and ask him, _Was this worth it? Why did you need to do it, and do it this way? Why do you feel the need to throw away what you had here, knowing what you were losing?_

Roy returns and Dick allows himself to doze. He hasn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours and he’s bone tired from the night and the week and his entire dysfunctional family. Around eight in the morning, Dick leaves the hospital and grabs coffee and a bagel from the seedy bodega a few blocks away. Not the best food, but it smells better than whatever Roy procured from the hospital. The hours tick by. Roy snores in the chair next to him. Dick ignores a text from Tim. He calls into work, let’s them know he’ll be taking at least the next few days off due to a family matter. He has the vacation time.

They’re well into the afternoon when at last someone knocks at the door. Roy jolts awake, but judging by his reaction, the woman before him is not a stranger. She’s an inch or two shorter than Dick with gray hair in a severe ponytail and face that suggests she rarely smiles. She’s certainly not smiling at either of them now. A second woman joins here, younger and taller but with a similarly serious expression.

Roy jerks his thumb at Dick. “He’s with me.”

That seems to satisfy the older woman. She sets down a folder that seems to full of papers and x-rays on the counter and beckons them both over. Several x-rays are hung over a backlight that she switches on. Dick’s no doctor, but even he can see that something is off in most of them.

“I’m Dr. Olivia Olsen,” she says. “This is my colleague Dr. Lenore Zedecke. I assume Roy has informed you of the situation.

Dick nods.

“Your friend sustained very serious injuries, Mr. …”

“Just call me Dick. And he’s my brother”

“Very well then, Dick.” She shuffles through the paper and selects one of them to read off of. “To begin with, he suffered a dislocated kneecap and partial tears of his collateral ligaments in his knee. They will require rest and very limited weight bearing for the next one to two months. The same goes for his hip, which was dislocated. We reset the joint, but hip dislocation is a serious matter and he’ll be at high risk of another dislocation without proper care over the next few weeks. Fortunately, even though his dislocation seems to be associated with a high-impact collision, there are no accompanying fractures.

“He broke two bones in his wrist, the scaphoid and trapezium, and sustained a partial tear of the scapholunate ligament in his wrist—a severe sprain if you will—and it required us to insert a pin to stabilize the joint. We found two fractures on his metacarpals here and here,” she taps at the x-ray of a hand, “and breaks on three of his fingers, as well as a dislocation of his index finger. He also dislocated his shoulder and broke his clavicle in two places. We reduced his shoulder non-surgically, but the clavicle required the insertion of a plate to ensure proper union.”

Olivia frowns. “Now we get to the trickier ones.”

Dick wants to yell at her, is this not enough already? But it’s never been up to him to decide.

“When your friend arrived, he was in the preliminary stages of a hemothorax, that is a collapsed lung caused by the presence of blood in the chest cavity. Once drained, his lungs were found to be intact—which is a minor miracle—although there is some bruising which will require monitoring to ensure that it is not a very slow bleed. He broke four ribs, three on the right, one on the left, and one of the breaks was a open fracture that also required surgical repair, and we believe it and the surrounding tissue and blood vessels is the source of much of the blood we removed from his chest cavity, along with the laceration which we stitched close. Combined with the lung bruising, he’ll need oxygen support for the near future to ensure he’s not breathing too shallowly, which can lead to pneumonia. We also used the surgery to repair a tear and hematoma in his kidney which was bleeding too much to be left alone.”

“Lastly, there was also some significant head trauma. He suffered a fracture to his zygomatic arch—his cheekbone—and a blowout orbital floor fracture, which is a break at the base of the eye socket. Preliminary testing indicates that his optical muscles and nerves seem intact, but we’ll need to test his vision once he is awake and the swelling has eased. Furthermore, there is a skull fracture, right about here,” she gestures to the top of her own forehead. “Brain scans indicate no cerebral contusions and little swelling, which is another minor miracle, but we’re going to be monitoring that over the next few days to ensure it stays that way. We suspect a moderate-to-severe concussion, which we can confirm with neurological testing once he returns to consciousness.”

Roy’s knees buckle, and it’s all Dick can do to pull him back up and then find a chair for him to collapse onto rather than the floor.

“He’s stable for now, but he’s not in the clear yet.”

Dick nods. “We need to see him.”

Lenore frowns. “It’s well past visiting hours, and—

“They’ll see him,” cuts in Olivia. “We’ll need their help to keep him monitored.”

“When can he be moved?” asks Roy

Lenore blinks. “I’m sorry, is there another place you’d rather he be?”

Dick hesitates, but offers, “I have connections in Bludhaven, and we’d rather he be moved there as soon as possible. Gotham isn’t the best place for Jason at the moment.”

Dick’s only vaguely aware of what Jason has disclosed to both Lenore and Olivia, though he knows that Olivia has some connection to Green Arrow. Jason’s forged identity holds for now, but he had just shot the Penguin on live television. Once the footage circulated on the 24 hour news cycle, it was only a matter of time before someone recognized the man or started asking questions about how he’d ended up half dead in a backwater hospital while still having enough funds to pay for treatment outright. He half expects Olivia to put up a fight, but fortunately her time with vigilantes has imparted some common sense. She knows enough to not pry where she’ll only meet steel.

“A few days at least, while we monitor the swelling in his brain and his breathing. After that, with proper medical transport and a clear plan for transfer to another medical facility, we might be able to make it work. He still won’t be ready for discharge for at least a week, maybe more.”

“I’ll arrange it,” he says.

“I want to see documentation for everything.”

He smiles grimly. “It won’t be an issue. Now let me see my brother.”

After everything he’d seen and done over the years, you’d think the sight of someone in a hospital bed wouldn’t be enough to send him for a loop, but there’s something different about it being his brother and knowing that it was their father responsible for the damage before him. He knows Jason screwed up, and God knows he’s wanted to knock some sense into his brother on many occasions, but _this_ …

This is different. This wasn’t knocking sense into someone but knocking their entire being away, bringing them as close to death as he’s seen since, well, Jason’s actual death.

Jason’s lower half is covered by a sheet, but Dick still notices a lump where his leg has been elevated beneath the fabric. His right arm is also elevated with a splint stabilizing his wrist, hand and fingers, and a strap sling holds the whole limb in place. His chest is either hidden by bandages or covered by deep, ugly bruising that speaks of serious damage beneath the surface. They’ve covered his right eye with a soft patch of gauze and bandaged the cut on his temple, but the rest of his face on the right size is nearly swollen beyond recognition. An oxygen mask over his face completes the whole horrific picture.

“Oh Jay,” he whispers. “Not like this.”

But Jason can’t respond.

When Jason awakens, it is to someone holding his hand and a soft murmur of voices above him. It is also to a great deal of pain. His whole body, from his leg to his head (and especially his head) aches with a sharp acuity that snatches his breath away, which in turn forces a cough that rattles his bones and seems to tear at the inside of his chest.

“Jason!” says one of the voices. “Jaybird,” says another.

A hand moves to his shoulder as he wheezes out his breaths, squeezing his eyes shut and crushing the hand holding his with his grip. Someone’s stroking his hair, fingernails at his scalp, and he tries to focus on that soft touch rather than the blinding agony of the rest of his body. It’s only partially successful, and he’s ashamed to realize that tears have started to leak out from his eyes despite his efforts.

“Breathe slowly, little brother, easy does it.”

Little brother?

Using the dregs of his strength, he cracks open his left eye (the right one seems to be stuck on something) and blinks against the harsh glare of light. He can’t help the moan which escapes him, and he shuts his eye again, trying to ease the pain.

“You’re all right, Jason. Roy’s turning off the lights, okay? You’re going to be all right.”

“It’s done,” says the voice, and that must be Roy. It sounds just like him.

“Okay, you can open your eyes now. Please, just for a moment.”

Strictly for his own curiosity and not because someone asked him, Jason opens his eye once more and heaves a sigh of relief when the room is dark. His vision blurs despite his efforts to focus and the dim lighting allows only outlines to filter through to his eye, but there’s no mistaking the man in front of him. Dick Grayson. Prodigal son and everything Jason would never be. The golden fleece to his black sheep.

What on earth is Dick Grayson doing with him?

His lips form the shape of the words to ask, but to his frustration, his throat falters and only a small puff of air escapes. He swallows and tries again. “Dick, what are you…” The words fumble, and he’s not sure even he would understand what he’s trying to say.

“Listen, don’t talk. You’ve been having some difficulty breathing, so they have you on oxygen, and you’re not taking off the mask for anything, not until you’re a little stronger.”

He wants to argue that he is strong, that whatever Dick is doing there, he doesn’t need the help, but already his head is pounding and what little light remains in the room is like a screwdriver through his temple. He tries to lift a hand to rube the ache away, but neither hand budges. Why does one of them hurt so much?

He tries once again to verbalize his displeasure, but all that emerges is a plaintive sigh.

Someone lays a hand on his other arm, which he can’t see goddamnit because his right eye refuses to open, so he turns his head and—

The word vanishes in a haze of black and red.

He resurfaces again, coughing this time, and there are hands on him, holding him back against something soft and pressing a piece of plastic to his face which hurts more than it has any right to. By the time the coughing ends, he doesn’t want to be awake anymore.

“Jaybird, can you stay with us?”

He can’t, and so he allows himself to drift below the surface of his consciousness where the tendrils of his physical pain can no longer touch him.

The next time he awakens, there’s a woman standing over him that he doesn’t recognize. He tries to turn his head to look at her, but a twinge in his neck and at the base of his skull warns him against any movement. The rest of his body aches distantly, held at bay by medication he’s sure, but his head feels clearer than before. Clear enough that he wants answers from the stranger at his side.

He can’t quite manage a proper word, but he lets out a small grunt. The woman snaps her gaze away from her clipboard and onto his face.

“Ah, Jason, nice to meet you at last.”

He frowns, or tries to, but the motion tugs uncomfortably at what feels like a mass of swollen bruised skin at his face. She knows his name.

“I’m sure you have questions, and I’ll have some for you in a moment, but for now all you need to know is that I’m an old acquaintance of your friend Roy. You’ve had him and your brother rather worried these past few days.”

He’s not sure how to respond. He feels horrible and sluggish enough that it’s conceivable it’s been days. He doesn’t know enough about himself at the moment to tell Roy not to worry about him. His arm throbs, so he tries to move it, but something holds it in place across his chest, which is probably for the best given how much his wrist and fingers shoot sparks up his arm and right to his head.

“I’m going to perform some neurological tests on you. I don’t want you to speak or nod your head, so blink once for yes, blink twice for no. Do you understand?”

He blinks once.

“Very good. First, is Jason Peters your name?”

So that’s the alias du jour. He blinks once.

“Do you know who Roy is.” One blink. “Do you know who Dick is?” Dick has to be Dick Grayson. There’s only one person he knows dumb enough to pick that for a nickname, except for some crotchety old men in their seventies. He blinks again.

The doctor scribbles on the chart. “Very good. Do you remember what happened? Do you remember how you were hurt?”

The recollection which had simmered beneath his haze and pain bursts forth. He remembers Batman—Bruce—his _dad_ —ramming his fist into his face, into his chest, slamming him against the concrete and dragging him away as his broken limbs thumped painfully on the ground. Even after the helmet was gone, the sight of Jason’s face had done nothing to deter the brutal beatdown. If anything, it seemed to anger him more. He remembers Bruce’s hand clenched around his throat as he hung limp and pliant, unable and unwilling to retaliate. He remembers how hard it was to breathe, like an anaconda had coiled around his throat and slowly squeezed the life out of him, and how his vision went black, and—

“Jason! Jason!”

Bruce yells his name, and the words sound dirty in his mouth. Despite his disdain for his father, to hear such vitriol stabbed at his chest as surely as did his broken ribs.

“Jaybird!”

That’s odd. No one calls him Jaybird except…

“Little wing, calm down, please little brother.”

“Dick,” he gasps through the razors in his throat. He realizes that his eyes are closed, and he forces open his left one. Both Dick and Roy hover above him, true fear in their eyes. Someone is holding down his limbs, preventing him from moving, but the touch still hurts.

“Jason, thank God,” says Dick.

“Hurts,” he forces out through clenched teeth.

“I know, I know.” Dick sounds as if the admission hurts him just as much as it hurts Jason, which is infuriating. Dick isn’t the one who’s been beaten to death, resurrected, and beaten nearly to death again, this time by his father.

“Look, just focus on breathing, in and out, in and out.”

“Jay, you’re not looking so hot, buddy,” interjects Roy.

“Well of course he’s not,” says Dick. “Did you think he was going to win a beauty pageant?”

Roy glares at Dick so that even Jason can see his frustration with his one eye. His one eye whose vision is growing blacker and blacker and the pressure on his chest increases in weight from that of a textbook to a full-grown whale. He hears his own breath wheeze from his chest long after his vision is gone, and he hears an alarm blare, and someone shout, and all he can think is, maybe this time, he really is gone again. Killed by the joker, only to be killed by Batman.

He doesn’t expect he’ll be lucky enough for a second resurrection.

He loses time and space. His body floats, his mind seems as empty and whole as a broken egg. Joker called him humpty dumpty during their fatal encounter so many years ago. _You can’t fix an egg once it’s cracked_ , he’d cackled as he swung the crowbar at his head. Even after his resurrection, he’d needed the Lazarus pit to repair the damage dealt that night. One miracle wasn’t enough to fix him. He’d needed the fire and the rage and the madness of its depths to recover even a semblance of who he’d been before.

“Jason.”

The voice confuses him. It bears no resemblance to Talia, the one person who called for him after the pit. Who else knows about him? He struggles to open his eyes, not caring that he’ll be forced to wade through the horrid green glow of the pit.

And he sees white. White and red and a blurry yet familiar face.

“Roy,” he rasps. The effort of speaking drains him, but his throat lets him say the words nonetheless, which is progress from before.

“Hey, buddy, it’s me. You’re going to be okay. Just…just don’t try to move at all.”

“K,” he breaths out on an exhale.

“Sorry about last time,” says Roy, rubbing the back of his neck. “We should never have left you alone with a stranger, and we should never have let her ask anything that could upset you. Dick and I—one of us will always be here from now on, even when the doctor is talking with you.”

Jason can’t find the words to express to express his gratitude, and he doesn’t think he could voice that many consecutive syllables even if he knew what to say. Instead, he clears his throat and mouths, “What…”

Fortunately, Roy, understands his question. “You were thrashing around last time and it messed up something inside of you. Your lung started collapsing again, so they had to take you back to surgery and re-fix one of your ribs. Seriously, you really shouldn’t move at all, not for the next while at least.”

He hates following orders from anyone, but from Roy, he’ll accept the advice. Besides, he’s not sure his limbs would obey him. As if to emphasize the point, Roy wraps his fingers around Jason’s wrist, and Jason lacks the strength to fight back.

Roy grimaces. “Just get some sleep. You’ll feel better.”

His eyes close, and he falls into something resembling sleep for a long while.

When he awakes again, his body still aches abominably but his brain powers on with more energy than before. Time to use the awareness for good. Something itches at his nose, and he feels plastic tubing wrapping around his face. Oxygen, he assumes, recalling Roy’s prior revelation about his lung collapsing and difficulties breathing. The tubing shifts and rubs at his cheek, sending a spark of pain up through his face. Facial bruising, maybe worse, especially since all attempts at opening his right eye meet with resounding failure. Tilting his head ever so slightly, he glances at the rest of his body and curses softly. A sling supports his right arm and bandages wrap around his abdomen, and a veritable kaleidoscope of bruises covers the rest of his chest. He knows that the doctor must have provided some serious pain relief, but his ribs still hurt as he breathes, and his lower back throbs. His left leg, though hidden beneath a sheet, sits elevated above his right, and based on the muted ache from his hip and his knee, he assumes Bruce caused some damage on his lower half as well.

Overall, it might be the second worst he’s ever felt in his life, and that’s quite the accomplishment with his history.

Using the remainder of his energy, he flops his head over to the left to investigate the source of the soft snoring he hears. Much to his dismay, he finds Dick instead of Roy.

He inhales too quickly, drawing a sharp cough which sends daggers through his chest and jolts Dick awake. Dick comes to with an undignified yelp, but the moment he lays eyes on Jason, his face molds into one of his trademark Dick Grayson feeling expressions, complete with unwarranted and unwanted sympathy and affection.

“Jason, thank God,” he says, reaching over for Jason’s hand. Only Jason’s dulled reflexes prevent him from retracting in time to avoid the assault on his personal space.

“You keep…saying that,” he says, and to his pleasure, his voice only sounds as if it’s spent a few days in the Sahara rather than a full week. He speaks from experience on this matter.

“Well I wouldn’t have to if you would just—

“What?” says Jason, aiming for sarcastic and landing on bitter but mostly landing on pathetic as he coughs weakly. “Not get… beaten up by our father?” To his annoyance, he lacks the breath for even one full sentence.

“Take better care of yourself,” says Dick pointedly.

“Not my fault…Bruce can’t handle…me.” He hiccoughs on the last word, and grimaces as his ribs throb.

“You shot the Penguin.”

“I’ve shot…a lot of people.”

“You were trying to kill him.”

Jason rolls his eye. “Again, not my…first rodeo.”

Dick glares. “On national TV. You did it after you promised that you wouldn’t do it again.”

“Newsflash, Dickface, in…my code of ethics,...taking out dirtbags who…killed my father takes precedence over the…”—he’s gasping for breath now—"fantasy you guys have of redemption.”

Something Jason says—he’s not quite sure which part—finally forces Dick to relinquish his grip of Jason’s hand. Maybe it’s the slight slur in his voice that even Jason can hear. Even if he wanted to have a cordial discussion with his brother, he’s not sure he has the mental capacity to act with sufficient diplomacy. Heaving a world-weary sigh, Dick rubs his knuckles into his forehead as if trying to scour his brain of his Jason-induced migraine. Jason smiles in schadenfreude-like satisfaction. It’s good to know he can still cause a headache in some members of his family. Eventually, he peers at Jason through bleary, exhausted eyes. “I’m not going to be the one to change your mind. I know I keep hoping I will, that maybe I’ll get through to you—

“But next time…when I get died and resurrected…I’ll ask for it to make…me a better person.”

Dick snorts, then buries his head in his hands again. “God, why do you always have to be so…”

“Hilarious?”

“You,” says Dick, gesturing at him.

Jason refuses to respond to that question. Instead, he pointedly changes the subject. “Where’s Roy?”

“Showering. Or sleeping. We’ve been doing twelve hour shifts here more or less.”

“How did you…find me?” His head throbs viciously, nearly stealing his breath entirely. If Dick notices, he doesn’t comment.

“Roy called.” When Jason raises his eyebrow in skepticism, Dick continues, “Look, it’s not like he had a lot of options. You haven’t exactly left a trail of well-wishers in your wake.”

“I have friends,” he says, but it’s only half true. Now that his mind is a little clearer, he can recall with excruciating detail his last encounter with Artemis and Bizarro. That ship could have blown them into smithereens, or they could have smashed into another world more dangerous than their own. Even if they lived, he wouldn’t be seeing them anytime soon, if ever again. Without them, and with Kory a distant presence, he only has Roy. He has one friend.

If Dick notices his retreat, he says nothing. “Next time leave a phone book or something then. I think I’m the only one Roy knew in the area who wasn’t actively trying to kill you.”

Then, because Jason can, because he’s already tired and in pain with every breath he takes, he says, “I’m still waiting…to see if you…want to kill…me too. Batman…did.”

Dick blanches. He’s wearing a gray hoodie over jeans, and his face loses color until it bears the same ashen shade as his clothing.

Jason shifts uncomfortably in his bed, and the movement reignites little hotspots of misery along his body. Combined with the merciless ache in his head, full-body heaviness and tightness in his chest, he’s not sure how much longer he is for consciousness. Likely not long. He tilts his head away from Dick; his temples throb, his shoulder burns, and Dick’s hurt is somehow just as tangible as all of his physical ailments. Unlike his physical injuries, he can choose to ignore Dick, and he closes his eye to indicate that he’s done with the conversation and with consciousness. Beneath his veneer of sleep, he listens to Dick breathing, trying to determine if his brother is still there, still awake and watching him. Eventually, his feigned sleep gives way to real exhaustion and he allows his body and mind to relax fully at last.


	3. Chapter 3

When Roy slinks into the hospital room, hair still damp from his shower and mind still muzzy from sleep, he doesn’t expect to encounter Dick Grayson looking as if he’d just received a powerful punch to the gut. Jason is still sleeping, and a quick glance at his vitals indicates that he’s relatively stable for now. Not that Dick would just be sitting there if there were an issue. Still, he stares at Jason, watching with his own eyes how his friend’s chest rises and falls with comforting steadiness.

“He woke up,” says Dick hoarsely. “Only for a little while, and he’s—he’s still having trouble focusing. He keeps slurring his speech, but I don’t know if he’s aware.”

Ah. No matter how slurred his speech, Jason must have said something to Dick during his brief conscious time. Few things besides Batman and Jason (really, the whole family) have the potential to knock Dick Grayson on his well-sculpted ass so thoroughly. Once upon a time, he might have offered the support of a friend, but he’s been Jason’s friend for far too long now. He knows he can’t fully trust the rest of the family. Dick will put on a good show, but in the end, Roy doesn’t trust him not to lock Jason away if he thinks it’s necessary.

“You should get some sleep,” says Roy, in lieu of anything even remotely emotional. “Your shift is up.”

Dick doesn’t respond. His hand lies just next to Jason’s on the bed, but they don’t touch.

Roy steps forward. “Your shift is over, and you reek. No wonder Jason wanted to go back to sleep.”

Dick doesn’t really smell too terrible, and his attempt at humor is probably a waste, but he figures that out of everything, Dick’s instinct for consideration towards other is a good target to get him to move the fuck out of there. His hand retreats from the bed, and Roy counts it as a victory.

“If you need something to do, think about how we can get him farther away from here. Most of my contacts are in Star City or scattered hell-knows-where, but Batman kicked him out of Gotham, and I don’t want to give your homicidal father another shot at him.”

Dick flinches at the accusation at his father, but the biggest surprise is that he doesn’t argue. Maybe seeing Batman’s brutality inflicted on his son is enough to give Dick pause about who is in the right, even though Nightwing would never fully embrace Jason’s methods.

“Dick,” says Roy, allowing his old affection for the friendship they’d shared once upon a time to slip through. “He’s probably not going to wake up for a while again. You won’t be missing much.”

“Let me know if he does.” That’s all Dick says, and then he walks stiffly away from the bed and out the door. Roy doesn’t hesitate to take his seat by Jason’s bed and open his bag to pull out a new arrow prototype he’s been tinkering with; nothing explosive (he’s not stupid enough to bring flammables around someone on oxygen), but still a good distraction for his mind and his hands. Jason would have brought a book, something intellectual and literary, but Roy never found the same enjoyment in reading. His mind worked best when he could apply it to something physical. In this case, the arrow he’s designing (hoping to design, stupid thing won’t work right) should implant a locator in its victim’s body. That part’s simple enough. The tricky part is designing the locator so that it will embed itself firmly in the muscle, making it nearly impossible to remove without taking a hunk of flesh out as well. Ideally, he’ll have it biologically powered as well, drawing energy from its host so that it will never blink out for lack of battery. The last feature is also giving him some trouble—he’s never liked it when he needs to combine biology with technology, expect when using technology to blow it to pieces. He’d even done some reading to figure it out, God help him.

A nurse flits in and out; he recognizes her vaguely, knows she’s someone trusted by Lenore. Olivia drops in on him hours later, though how many hours, he couldn’t say. She eyes the arrow in his hands and the toolkit at his feet with suspicion but refrains from comment. Enough time around Green Arrow and his ilk will numb you to odd and violent hobbies.

“Has he woken up?” she asks while checking over his monitors, frowning at one of the numbers on the screen.

“Not around me, but Dick said he did earlier. Didn’t last long and he still slurring his speech, not fully with it.”

Olivia’s frown deepens. “I had hoped we might see some more improvement by now, but concussions are always fickle. Different for each person each time.”

Roy knows this as well from personal experience. “I think he’s in pain too. I know him, and he’s not a very smiley guy, but…he looks stressed, even when he’s sleeping.”

“I’m going to get another scan of his head in to be sure, but then I’ll see what we can do about his pain levels. It would be much easier to assess if he would wake up.”

Roy stands. “I’m coming with you.”

Olivia shakes her head. “You don’t need to be recognized by more people in this hospital.”

“Remember what happened last time he woke up with you around? You don’t know him like I do. I know how to talk to him and what subjects to avoid.”

Olivia crosses her arms. “This would all be a lot easier if you’d just tell me what happened to him.”

Roy laughs grimly. “We don’t have enough time in the day to tell you everything that’s happened to him.”

His quip does not amuse Olivia, but she rolls her eyes and allows him to come down. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your experience), Jason remains asleep throughout the entire experience. Olivia deems his brain function to be adequate and orders a small change in his medication. Apparently, it’s important to not give him too much, as that could depress his already mediocre breathing even further.

Jason sleeps throughout his entire shift, and through Dick’s entire shift as well, making it a full 24 hours. Six days in, he’d hoped for Jason to be able to stay awake for at least half an hour; now he’s hoping for him to wake up at all. Olivia and Lenore assure him that it’s not entirely unusual for him to react this way given the trauma inflicted on him and the mental stress of the incident as well, even if they don’t know the specifics of the encounter. He tinkers with his arrow, and when it frustrates him, he moves on to another arrow, this one designed to hook onto any surface, no matter how slippery. He’s already got one which works on many surface, but he wants this one to work on glass or the smoothest of ice.

He tests it on a piece of smooth stone, as a preliminary assessment. The material of the arrow crumples in on the stone and spreads, forming an adhesive layer across the surface. He lifts up the arrow and watches with satisfaction as the stone sways but remains attached firmly to the shaft.

“Thought you already had one of those.”

Roy drops the arrow, stone and all, and whips around to see Jason blinking at him with one bleary eye.

“Jaybird,” he says, trying to keep the emotion in his voice to a minimum, “welcome back to the land of the living.”

“A few years late on that one,” says Jason. Roy grimaces, but the slight upturn in Jason’s lips hints at a smile, which is enough to instill some confidence. Jason will snark on his deathbed, but a smile? He must actually be feeling a little better.

“It’s okay, I know that’s old news now,” says Jason. “Don’t let details of my death bore you into an early grave.”

“I’m a little more interested in the new and improved you, or at least, the you who’s still alive despite Bruce’s best efforts.” Before Jason can retort with something equally petulant and useless, he leaned forward. “How are you feeling, Jaybird? For real.”

Jason sinks back into his pillow, eyes darting around the room, probably trying to assess if it matches what he last remembered. Whatever he sees satisfies him, and he rotates his head to the left to better see Roy. “My head still hurts, chest feels tight, but everything else is okay for the moment, I guess.”

“How bad is your head?” He’s no doctor, but even he knows that Jason’s head injury presents the greatest long-term threat. From what little he’s gleaned from Jason’s cryptic, incomplete statements over the years, the Joker caused significant brain damage such that even after resurrection, Jason wasn’t really able to function. The Lazarus pit healed him enough, but not without a whole host of other problems. The brain scans may say his brain looks normal enough for someone who’s been beaten half to death within the past week, but Roy knows how precarious the balance can be.

“I’ve had worse,” says Jason.

“Not helpful. You’ve been dead.”

“Fine,” says Jason. He sighs as if Roy’s inquiry into his well-being is too burdensome to bear. Dramatic asshole. “What do you want me to say? I feel like a fucking coconut that fell out of a palm tree. What the hell did B do to me?”

“For one thing, he broke your skull and a few other bones in your face.”

The news takes Jason aback, Roy can see it. He probably expected a concussion, but a fractured skull? Even a simple break can turn deadly. Still, he persists. “My eye—why can’t I open it?”

“You broke the bone around it,” says Roy. “You should be fine with your vision, but Lenore doesn’t want to strain your eye any more than necessary. It’s probably too swollen for you to use anyways at this point.”

“Fuck,” says Jason. He glances down, taking in the sight of his arm and chest, and looses a small growl of frustration. “Help me sit up.”

Roy frowns, doing his utmost to convey his sentiment that this is a terrible idea to Jason. As usual, Jason is too damn stubborn to give a crap about Roy’s opinion or anyone else’s besides his own, and he knows that left unaided, Jason will attempt it on his own. Jason knows that he’s won the metaphorical battle too, Roy can tell from the tinge of smugness mixed in with his usual cynicism and angst. First, Roy cranks up the bed a little (it has a hand crank—that’s how out of date the entire establishment is) and then, with as much care as his hands can muster, he guides Jason’s body up, positioning an extra pillow behind his head and neck for good measure.

Roy expects at least a sarcastic thank you, but when he pulls away, he sees that Jason has closed his eyes again, but not in sleep. His mouth is too taut, fist too clenched.

“Jason?”

“Just dizzy,” murmurs Jason. Already, he seems exhausted. Roy allows him a minute to regain his composure before he lowers him down again or gets help. Fortunately, Jason cracks his eye open soon enough and moves his good hand from the sheets of the bed to edge of his sling where his fingers worry at the seam there.

“B really worked you over.”

Jason snorts, then winces. “Yeah, no shit. Where am I?”

“Just outside of Gotham.”

Jason tenses, understandably. “Roy, I can’t—

“We’re getting you to Bludhaven in the next couple of days. You weren’t stable enough to move for a while, but Dick’s working on the transfer to a hospital he knows there.”

“Bullshit,” says Jason. “Bad enough that he knows where I am now, I’m not going to whatever mole of a doctor he’s chosen over there. Probably reports directly to Bruce.”

“It’s too far to take you to Star City, and I don’t know someone else I trust outside of Gotham that’s close enough. Olivia was the best I could do here—she used to help out Ollie before she moved away.”

“I trust you,” says Jason. “I don’t trust Dick.”

“Well, you kinda have to, Jaybird,” says Roy, taking a far more serious tone than he’s used to. “I’m not watching you die because of your stubborn pride. You came this close the other day, you know? Your lung collapsed, you were bleeding badly, you could have had something wrong with your brain.”

“Already something wrong with my brain, ending up like this,” mutters Jason. He turns up to face Roy with a pained smile. “You think Bruce was trying to finish what the Joker did? Can’t cause trouble if you can’t think for yourself.”

“I’m not even going to pretend to understand B’s psyche. That’s too messed up, even for someone like me.”

“And here I thought you liked to live on the wild side.”

“Not that wild,” Roy says.

“Disappointing,” says Jason, but Roy can tell that he didn’t mean it. He tilts his head away, but quickly shifts his head back when even the soft pillow proves to be too much pressure on the right side of his face. “When can I get out of here?”

Roy sighs. “I just told you—we’re getting you to Bludhaven in the next couple of days.”

It’s Jason’s turn to act like Roy’s the idiot. “Here, Bludhaven—as long as I’m in a hospital like this, you know it’s not safe.”

“It’s not safe for you to be outside of one right now. Last she told me, Olivia says you’ll probably need at least another week of monitoring or so, and then a lot of rest for the next couple of months after. It’s not going to be easy for you to get around for a while.”

Jason growls and slams his good fist against the mattress. The thing is, good is a relative term, and even the good parts of Jason are attached to bad parts. Roy watches helplessly as Jason yelps and tries to curl in on himself, but even that movement is too painful to bear. Instead, Jason sinks further into the pillows, panting and trembling.

“Ow, fuck, shit, that _hurts_.”

“Then don’t do it,” says Roy. He hates this, chiding Jason like Dick would. Normally, Jason is the one with a little more control over his impulses (not saying much, but it’s something), but the whole situation has clearly destabilized him and Roy understands, even if he loathes watching Jason struggle. How many situations involve not one but two shitty dads? It’s no wonder Jason’s barely in control. The head injury probably doesn’t help.

“Why’d _he_ do it, huh?” says Jason, still panting, still shaking. “All of Gotham’s criminals, and he hits me the hardest. He broke my mask with one punch. Do you know what kind of force you need to do that?”

Roy doesn’t have the helmet specs with him, but he knows it’s a lot.

“And even when I was down,” continues Jason. “He saw the ship explode, knew my friends were up there, and all I wanted was a moment to process everything and he fucking attacks me. He knows what Artemis and Bizarro meant…mean to me. He knew I was hurt already. And he didn’t give a shit, not a single solitary fuck. I’m just a criminal to him, except he treats criminals better than me. I’m worse because I’m his fault. He called me his biggest failure, did you know that?”

“No,” says Roy, shaking his head. He only arrived at the tail end of the fight, just in time to see Bruce dragging Jason’s body across the rooftop only to rip the bat symbol from his bloody chest, leaving behind a wound as gaping as any of the physical ones on his body.

“I played by their rules for years, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough. They’re just waiting for me to fail. I don’t know why I ever bothered to try.”

“Whoa, hey,” says Roy. He leans in, places his hand on Jason’s arm. The trembling stills just a little, but he’s not sure he’s eased the tension at all. He has to try, if only because Jason is in danger of tearing something open again. “Look, I know you, and you do things because _you_ want to, not because someone else is looking over your shoulder. If you did something good, it’s because you chose to. They don’t get credit for that.”

“My definition of ‘good’ doesn’t seem to line up with most people’s.”

“It’s fine by me,” says Roy, and Jason’s eye widens. Roy curses softly. He really should have addressed this earlier, the way they’d last parted, up until now Jason’s hasn’t been coherent enough. In an ideal world, they’d wait even longer until Jason regained enough strength to keep himself sitting upright without looking like a strong breeze could topple him. “Jason, I know you. I know who you are and why you do the things I do, and I trust you, okay? I know you didn’t decide to kill Cobblepot out of nowhere. Do you regret that?”

“I didn’t try to kill him,” says Jason, and Roy flounders.

“Jay, what do you mean? You shot him in the face.”

“It was a blank,” says Jason, and Roy’s blood runs cold.

“A blank?” he whispers. “Why would you—why would you do that? Why would you pretend to kill him without actually doing it?”

“I wanted him to feel the fear of death,” says Jason. “But I didn’t want to kill him, not just yet.”

“Did you tell Bruce?”

Jason laughed at that, genuine, horrific laughter, which soon devolved into an even more horrific cough. “Fuck no. First thing he did was smash my face in, he didn’t really give me a chance to explain myself.”

Roy’s still reeling from the revelation. “You had to know what it would look like. You had to know what he’d think.”

Jason laughs again, angrier this time. “I wasn’t thinking about him at the time. I was thinking about me and Penguin.” His expression darkens. “I shouldn’t have to run everything I do by him. He doesn’t have the final say on what happens in Gotham.”

“He thinks he does,” remarks Roy.

“Well he doesn’t!” exclaims Jason, and he needs a minute to regain his strength after the outburst. Roy can see that Jason is utterly spent, but the rage burning within him cares not for the needs of his body. “He thinks he owns Gotham because he goes out there some nights, fights off a few rogues, and then heads back into his mansion. I was born in the parts of Gotham he visits, I lived on the streets for years with no soft pillow to return to or freshly cooked meal waiting for me. I don’t have to ask him for permission to handle the fucking Penguin.”

To Roy’s horror, a bead of moisture drips down the side of Jason’s face. Jason is crying. Roy knows better than to acknowledge it. “No, you don’t. Do you want to stick around Gotham? Once you’re better, of course.”

Jason turns aside, good arm clutching instinctively at his chest. “

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing any more.”

“I don’t know either, Jay,” says Roy. “You don’t have to know right now. But whatever you do choose, I know you, and I know you’ll do it for a reason.”

Jason’s quiet, his eyes closed. Several more tears stream down.

“For now, let’s just get you better, okay? I know from experience it’s hard to think clearly when you’re hopped up on meds.”

Jason nods, just a small jerk of his head, but Roy knows it’s all he’ll get for now.

He pulls out his phone and texts Dick. _We need to get him out of here._

He hesitates, then types out one last sentence. _There was no bullet. It was a blank._

Dick receives Roy’s text as he’s perusing his list of contacts, particularly those with ties to hospitals or other medical facilities. The more obvious ones Bruce will recognize, might even monitor given everything happening at the moment, but Bruce doesn’t know Bludhaven like he does, and he doesn’t know every detail of Dick’s life there. He just needs creativity.

He’s in his Bludhaven apartment. After days of crashing in one of his Gotham safehouses, he wants his own bed, some fresh clothes, his own shampoo. Small, trivial comforts, but he needs them after watching over Jason’s semi-comatose body for a week, constantly on edge, waiting for Jason to wake up or for one of the family to burst into the hospital to complicate an already screwed up situation. He’d already showered, and he works his way through his stretching routine as he glances over old case files. His shoulder is stiff, the same one which always ached given the opportunity after an encounter with Deathstroke in his teens.

He’s just settled into another old case, a woman he’d saved early on in his time as Nightwing who happened to be a medical resident at the time. Perhaps she’d stayed after her training, perhaps she still knew people she could direct him too.

The message chills Dick. A blank? Since when did Jason shoot blanks, especially at the Penguin? And why would he have done something like that when he knew the optics?

His phone rings and Dick answers it without checking the name. All of his phone calls have been from Roy.

“Grayson,” says a voice, a much higher pitched voice than he expected.

“Damian?” He pulls the phone down from his ear and checks the contact information. Damian Wayne.

“Where are you, Grayson?”

“Bludhaven,” says Dick. “My place.”

“You haven’t been there all week.”

“First of all, tell Bruce or Tim or whoever to stop tracking me day and night when I’m out as a civilian.” They won’t, but he says it on principle. “Secondly, so what? I don’t spend all my time in the city.”

“You’ve been in Gotham,” says Damian.

“A little,” says Dick. The hospital lies just outside Gotham’s border, so it’s technically true.

“You’ve been in Gotham and you haven’t spoken to father, or to anyone else for that matter. I was not aware you had a fight with him.”

“I didn’t have a fight with him, Dami,” says Dick, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been busy.”

“You’re not patrolling though. What on earth could be keeping you busy?”

“I have other things besides patrol. My entire life doesn’t revolve around my usual nightly activities.”

Damian doesn’t respond for more than ten seconds, Dick thinks Damian has hung up on him—wouldn’t be the first time, he never did know how to end a phone call, but then Damian asks, “Is this about Todd? Are you not talking to father because of him?”

“No! Well, maybe a little, but that’s not the whole story. It’s…it’s complicated.”

“I don’t know what’s so complicated about the situation,” says Damian, a little too haughtily for Dick’s taste. Dick really needs to spend more time at the manor—someone needs to teach the kid empathy, and it won’t be Bruce. “Todd tried to kill Penguin, breaking the code, and Batman banished him from Gotham, as he should have.”

“Is that what B told you?”

“It’s what Alfred said. Father hasn’t spoken about it at all, other than to say that we shouldn’t expect to see Red Hood anymore.”

“Dami, are you sure Jason is alive?”

“What?” For a moment, true surprise colors Damian’s tone before he can regain his usual composure. “Is there a reason he would not be?”

“Bruce, he…the two of them fought, though from my understanding it was a little one-sided.”

“Even if father hurt Todd, he would never kill him. Father would never kill anyone.”

“I don’t think Bruce knew what he was doing,” Dick says softly. “He wasn’t thinking clearly. Neither of them were.”

“Jason nearly killed the Penguin,” says Damian.

“And Bruce nearly killed him!” exclaims Dick. He takes a moment, forces himself to breathe evenly and slowly. He can hear something similar on the other end of the line. “Besides, the bullet was a blank. Cobblepot was never going to die.”

“A blank? Did he tell you that?” A pause. “Grayson, are you with Jason?” asks Damian slowly.

“No,” he says. Again, not technically a lie. Jason isn’t with him right now. “Roy got him out. And I don’t know where he is either.” That part is a lie, and Dick hates lying to Damian. Damian doesn’t need another adult in his life lying to him, but if Damian believes Dick knows, then he’ll be receiving a phone call or a visit from Bruce very soon.

“Are you angry with father?” Damian’s voice is small, too small. Whenever Dick and Bruce argued, Damian tried to intervene, trying to keep the peace between the two of them. It’s not unlike Dick’s relationship with Jason and Bruce, he thinks.

“Yes,” Dick sighs. “I think both of them weren’t. Jason was reckless, knowing he could have exposed all of us, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide what he did. It was deliberate, goading, even with the blank. But Bruce, he overreacted too. He lost control.”

“Father doesn’t lose control.”

“Yes, he does.” Dick says that part firmly, because he needs Damian to understand the above all else, Bruce is _human_ , just as Jason is human, and it is their very humanity which makes them both worth protecting, despite their mistakes. Bruce has lost control before, and he will again at some point as well, and he needs Damian to understand now so that the fall from the pedestal doesn’t leave as many cracks in either one of them. “He could have killed him, his son. If that’s not losing control, I don’t know how else to describe it. He didn’t give Jason the chance to explain. He and Jason are a lot alike in some ways, you know.”

“Todd? I don’t think so.”

“Neither of them wants to admit to it, but they are. They both see the world in black and white, both have rules. They just follow different ones.”

“Todd has murdered people.”

“I’m not saying I agree with him, Dami. I never agree with him, and I never will. But I’ll never understand what he went through, not in the same way, and it’s hard to know what someone should do in his situation. Probably not what he did, but still.”

“You always have a soft spot for him,” says Damian scornfully.

“I do,” admits Dick, not buying into Damian’s condescension. “Just as I do for all of you. I know you were just a child, but I’ve forgiven you for everything you’ve done in your past as well.” He’s loathe to bring up Damian’s past with the League, but Damian’s stubborn, and only a strong statement will make him even reconsider his opinion. “I’ve argued with Bruce, and I still work with him. I’ve forgiven Jason for what he’s done too.” On the other end of the line, Damian scoffs. “I’m not saying you have to feel the same way, or that it’s logical, but it is how I feel. I don’t think there’s much logic to forgiveness in the end. I don’t know if Jason will ever forgive Bruce.”

“Hmph,” says Damian, not agreeing, but not disagreeing either, which is the most Dick can ask for in the moment. “Todd fired a blank. Why?”

“I don’t know, Dami,” he says. “Probably no one knows except Jason.”

“And if Todd didn’t try to kill the Penguin, then father, he…”

He can hear Damian’s mind whirring. “Bruce overreacted to a situation he didn’t fully understand in a bad way. I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything as well.”

“Does father know now?”

Dick huffs out a laugh. “You’d know better than me.”

Damian grunts a little, displeased with the situation. Dick wonders if Bruce does know, if Damian will tell him. He’ll need to ask Damian later, when they have the time to discuss everything fully.

“I’ll talk to you later, kid,” he says, preparing to hang up. He has logistics to figure out, and Roy’s text has moved up their timeline.

“Grayson, wait…I…” Damian hesitates, and Dick imagines him biting his lip, the way he does when he encounters a rare moment of uncertainty. “Todd is alive, correct?”

A little spark of warmth lights up in Dick’s chest. Maybe Damian is farther along in his empathy than Dick imagined. “Yeah, he’s alive. He’ll be okay too, eventually.”

“Good,” says Damian, and then hangs up the phone. Kid always did want the last word.

It takes Dick the rest of the day to decide on the best place for Jason. There’s an urgent care clinic, somewhere he’s been as Officer Grayson when he needed to help someone else to medical care. He’s also saved the physician who runs the place twice, and he knows the place has a back room for unusual cases, such as an influx of seriously injured patients which overwhelmed the usual charity hospitals. He takes a nighttime visit as Nightwing to the clinic and while Dr. Collins hesitates at the unusual request, he acquiesces when Nightwing tells him that the people he would be helping are friends of his.

“The same as you?” asks Dr. Peterson.

“Not exactly the same,” he says. “But good people.”

The next day, he accompanies an unusually quiet and passive Jason from St. Margaret’s to the clinic. Roy handles the discharge from the hospital, as he knows Dr. Olsen and is best equipped to handle her stern insistence that Jason really is not ready for travel. Dick agrees with her, but he knows what ails Jason is more than physical, and after a brief talk with Roy, he knows he’ll never have the sense of security needed for true rest. The knowledge still doesn’t ease the twinge of regret as Jason leans heavily on Roy as they transfer him from the wheelchair to his new bed. He sits back, face pale and pinched, but Dick thinks he’s breathing a little easier, although that could just be the passage of time.

Dr. Peterson insists on doing an assessment of Jason’s condition and Roy observes, keeping watch on their interactions to avoid any incidents like at the hospital. When Dr. Peterson finishes, he emerges with a grim look on his face, discomfort etched into the wrinkles around his eyes. Dick does his best to thank him for the care, but he knows a visit or two as Nightwing will ease the fear and uncertainty.

Roy goes out for a quick bite to eat, starving for something besides hospital food, and Dick takes the opportunity to see Jason alone.

There are fewer monitors around him than before at the hospital, but Jason still has oxygen leading into a tube beneath his nose, and there are still several bags of IV fluids hanging above him. He looks better than he did a week ago, but if anything, the bruising on his torso and arm has gained surface area and color. Jason won’t be free of it for weeks if Dick’s experience tells him anything, although Jason did once mention that he healed a little faster since getting dunked in the Pit. Maybe the effect will help speed his recovery along.

Jason’s dozing, but he wakes up quickly enough when Dick takes a seat by the bed.

“Thanks for all this, I guess,” says Jason. His voice is stronger than it had been a couple of days ago, and Dick appreciates it. He’s sure Jason does as well.

“Just don’t press Dr. Peterson too much. He’s doing this as a favor to Nightwing, but this isn’t his usual sort of gig. Not like Dr. Olsen.”

“I’ll be on my best behavior.” Jason tries for humor, but it falls flat for both of them. The past week has left them both exhausted and wrung out.

“I know you and your best behavior, that’s what scares me,” says Dick. He rubs at his temple, fighting off a tension headache. “Look, I’m still going to check in on you, but I won’t be here as much. I have to go back to work, and Bludhaven needs Nightwing back on the streets. You’ll be safe here. B doesn’t know about any connection to this place, neither do the rest of them. Plus you have Roy.”

Jason hums in agreement.

“You’re lucky to have a friend like him.”

Jason sneers. “Why, because someone like me doesn’t deserve a friend?”

“What?! No—Jay, stop twisting my words here. I meant because he cares about you a lot. Anyone is lucky to have someone like that in their life. I know you two have been through some shit together, and he’s still here without question. It’s a good thing to have.”

“Reliability is a good quality,” Jason agrees. “I like to think of myself as reliably unreliable. Not that it matters much anymore to you, seeing as Bruce cut me out of the family.”

“What Bruce did doesn’t automatically transfer to me,” says Dick harshly.

“What, so we’re all happy as a daisy here?”

“No,” said Dick. “I’m mad. I’m mad at both of you, but I know it’s not going to change either of your minds, so I’m keeping it to myself.”

“But you still think Bruce is in the right here?”

“I don’t think either of you are right,” says Dick. “It’s possible to be wrong in two different ways.”

“Bruce could have killed me,” says Jason. He’s goading Dick now, he wants him to snap, but Dick won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Yeah, he could have. I’m still not sure what to make of it.” When Jason opens his mouth to argue, he cuts in again. “I’m still here, even after you tried to kill Damian and Tim. I know you’ve changed since then, I know, I know, but the only thing I’ve taken away from this past shitshow of a week is that nothing is as stable as you want it to be. For good or bad.”

Jason clenches his hand around the rim of his sling. “He beat me into the ground.”

“Did you think he was going to react well?”

“I didn’t think he’d try to fucking kill me,” growls Jason. “I thought he’d talk first, let me explain.”

“About the blank?”

Jason’s expression falls flat.

“Why did you do it, Jay? What was the point of all that if you weren’t going to try to kill him for real? You could have hurt him in a thousand other ways.”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” says Jason.

Dick shrugs. “I guess you don’t. But I don’t know what I’m going to tell Bruce, tell Tim, tell any of them when I talk to them again, try to help them understand the situation. An explanation could make things go smoother.”

“Your happiness has always been my greatest priority, says Jason. His good eye narrows. “So, I am out of the family after all. Unless everyone can ‘understand the situation.’”

“That’s not what I said,” growls Dick. He’s giving into Jason’s bait, he realizes, so he pulls himself back. “Look, just because I’m not happy with you, doesn’t mean I’m not speaking with you.”

Jason looks away, tilting his head to the side as much as he can without inciting another bout of the dizziness still plaguing him.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” says Dick. Jason turns his head back around, expression flat. “Bruce is never going to say it, but I’m sorry he hurt you like this. I’m sorry he banished you from Gotham. Things are never going to be easy between the two of you, I know, but they don’t have to be this hard.”

Jason almost smiles. “You going to apologize to Bruce on my behalf as well?”

Jason’s trying for funny again, but Dick shuts him down with sincerity. “No, that wouldn’t make sense. His anger is different…it’s based on principle, yours is based in something far more concrete. And I…I need to talk with Damian. And Tim, and Cass, and everyone else. Maybe even Alfred, though I suspect Alfred knows. He always know more than anyone else.”

The conversation has drained Jason even more. His eye is flickering shut once more as the exhaustion of the journey reaches him in full. When Roy knocks on the door, he thinks Jason might be fully asleep.

He places his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “See you soon, Jay. Get some rest.”

Roy nods at him. “Anything to know?”

Dick shakes his head. “No, nothing, just…” He studies Roy, his disheveled red hair, the godawful hat, the scent of terrible coffee wafting up from the Styrofoam cup clutched in his hand. They had been friends once, close. In another lifetimes, perhaps, he and Jason and Roy could all have shared a beer together, talking in a far simpler world about far simpler problems. “Take care of him, okay?”

Roy looks at him strangely. “Of course. Always have, always will.”

For the first time all day, Dick feels he can trust in something. If nothing else, he believes Roy is telling the truth. He holds onto that feeling as he steps outside of the clinic and begins to consider where the hell everything went wrong with his family. It's not going to be an easy solve, but he knows he'll get to it eventually. For now, all he wants is a cup of that shitty coffee Roy had been holding. He strolls off in the direction of a diner he knows, somewhere where he can think properly and try to think of what he wants say to Bruce. And then he needs the longest nap in the world.

He's finally back in Bludhaven, but somehow even the prospect of his own home no longer holds the same comfort. He's not sure it will for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may not be satisfied with how Dick's taking everything, but he canonically has a rocky relationship with Jason (across many timelines) and I think he's someone who likes to have time to process and plan, even when it comes to emotional things. I think having him not be conflicted in some way (or at least confused, trying to piece everything together) doesn't make as much sense for him given the history


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may or may not be a direct response to DC's decision about the fate of Jason's favorite redhead, because screw what did actually happen. Next chapter will deal more with Jason and the rest of his family.
> 
> Small rant: I do have conflicted feelings about Roy post-N52; I started with RHatO but then went back into older comics and realized that RHatO with Roy and Kory was weird, mostly because they screwed over Kory in a big way, but also because they changed a lot of my favorite aspects of Roy's character and story, especially his relationship with Lian. From what is left, I think that as far as Jason's character goes, having someone like Roy around is really important, even if the narrative doesn't serve Roy's character especially well. I think if they did something like YJ with multiple Roys, the OG Roy (Arsenal) would actually get along really well with Jason (feel abandoned by mentor, chip on shoulder, screwed over by the hero business, a little more trigger happy than your average DC hero, etc.), so I kinda like to merge the two canons and imagine that OG Roy and Jason are friends, and other Roy still has his relationships with other DC people and his daughter. Regardless, he should still be alive, because Heroes in Crisis was poorly handled to say the least.  
> End rant.

Jason leans considerably more weight on Roy than he initially intends as they step out onto the entrance to the Star City safehouse which Roy had selected for the time being. They’d already transferred once, from the helicopter Roy had “chartered” to a car, and this transfer from the car to the house is the last he can manage. He’d slept for a good portion of the journey, awaking only when weather jolted the helicopter back and forth, making it impossible for him to stay comfortable. Even with the brace around his knee, his left leg still aches with each step, threatening to buckle, and his headache worsens until it threatens to resurrect worst of the nausea and blurry vision of the past two weeks. It doesn’t help that he still can’t open his right eye. He stumbles, and Roy catches him, as Roy always will, but it doesn’t prevent it from hurting like a bitch. Though he’ll never admit it, the wrap holding his sling-bound arm pressed against his body is likely the only reason he doesn’t black out with the pain.

“Jesus, Jaybird,” Roy mutters. “Just a little further.”

“Does that look like a little to you?” he growls, staring at the ramp leading up to the townhouse entrance.

“Offer still stands for me to carry you. It’ll be just like a honeymoon, stepping over the threshold, hand-in-hand…”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” And just because he has to, he adds, “And you wish you were that lucky.”

“If this were a honeymoon, Jay, I’d ask for my money back. Even with all your limbs intact, that’s one ugly mug you’ve got right now.”

“You try breaking your skull, see how pretty you look.”

The banter as they scale the incline is almost enough to distract him. Almost. He’s panting by the time they reach the end, with cold sweat dripping from his forehead and a tremor running through his chest that pulls at his stitches and broken bones. Fortunately (and truly, fortunately, otherwise Jason would have had to let Roy carry him, and he never would have recovered from that), the door opens quickly once Roy scans his fingerprints and retinas, and they’re allowed inside without any hindrance. Sensing his discomfort, Roy directs them to the nearest bedroom. Normally Jason prefers somewhere less exposed, but right now, distance is the main consideration.

Roy deposits him gently on the bed and Jason collapses painfully onto the mattress. For a moment, it’s all he can do to close his one good eye and focus on taking several deep breaths. The respiratory therapist who visited the Bludhaven clinic emphasized over and over again the importance of proper breathing to avoid pneumonia, and he’d been there, done that as a young boy with no desire to repeat the experience, especially with broken ribs. The movement still presses his lungs against ribs painfully. His feet still hang off the edge of the bed, and the weight of them drags uncomfortably on his bad leg, but truthfully, he can’t muster the energy to lift them high enough to change it.

He hears footsteps around the bed, knows Roy must be doing something, but he decides he doesn’t need to observe. He trusts Roy, knows that he can take care of things. It’s why he doesn’t flinch when hands touch his ankles, then move to his boots, which both fall off his feet after being untied, and why he doesn’t mind as Roy moves his legs carefully on to the bed. He doesn’t open his eyes even as Roy lifts his head and neck to place two pillows there, then drapes a blanket over his body.

When Roy places his hand over Jason’s good arm, fingers alighting just above wrist, he does have some questions.

“You trying to hold my hand?” he croaks out. The bruising around his throat from Bruce’s stranglehold has mostly faded, but his voice still cracks if he uses it too much. He must have overdone it on the walk up the ramp.

To his credit, Roy doesn’t move his hand at all, not even a hesitant twitch away. If anything, he tightens his grip. “Just making sure you’re not going to make a break for it.”

That does make Jason crack his eye open. “For real? I’m the last one to admit to it, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving this bed for the next day.”

“More like for the next week,” says Roy. “I have crutches for you, but until you’re steady enough on your feet to use even one of them, I don’t think you’ll be able to move around much. Or at least until the swelling goes down in your knee.”

Jason grunts. He wiggles the toes and rotates the ankle of his leg and winces when the motion travels up through his knee and hip. “Whatever.”

“Do you think you popped any stitches?”

“No,” he says. When Roy still looks unconvinced, he tacks on, “I swear. You’d find it one way or another eventually.”

“Because I’m a great detective?”

Jason snorts. “Fuck no, I wouldn’t trust you to solve a jaywalking case. Even you won’t miss the blood.”

Roy ignores that. “You going to puke?”

Jason considers it. The pain and vertigo of their journey from the helicopter have taken their toll, but he thinks his stomach has settled enough for now. He shakes his head minutely, to avoid any further damage.

“Good,” says Roy, standing up. “At least I can leave you long enough to get some supplies.”

Jason slept on the ride over, but already his limbs (even his good ones) weigh him down with exhaustion. He’s familiar with the leaden sensation that accompanies recovery from serious injury, and despite what Roy had said earlier, if he’s being honest, he’s looking at weeks, plural, before he’ll be able to spend much time on his feet. Even when he is up and about, he’ll be largely useless until his arm allows him to do more than twitch it painfully. With all of his fingers besides his thumb out of commission, he really can’t do much of anything with it at the moment.

By the time Roy returns, he’s mostly drifting. Roy asks softly if he can change his bandages. Jason would rather not deal with it, but he can feel the sweat soaking into them from today’s exertion, and it probably is worth checking if he popped a stitch. He murmurs out a low agreement and then clenches his teeth as Roy manipulates him. The worst comes when he’s forced to turn to allow better access to the wound where his open rib fracture had been. More than two weeks later, and any pressure on that part of his torso is still nearly unbearable. He thinks he hears the bones grind together, even though he knows that’s absurd, but the sound vibrates through him, and he can’t restrain a gasp and a moan. He’s shaking from the pain and the exhaustion

When Roy finishes with his ministrations, it’s less than a minute until he’s fully asleep.

He’s not sure what his dreams are, but he awakens to the sensation of something shattering across his face. It feels sharp and brittle against his skin, unlike his normal dreams of cold iron shattering his jaw and skull. The voice around him is deeper two, angrier. Odd. The Joker never sounds angry, not in his subconscious. The Joker only reveals his true fury when someone threatens to thwart his schemes, and Jason never came close in Sarajevo as a boy. He had hoped to watch the light die from his face as Bruce finally killed him, but all that plan ever gave Jason was a scar across his neck and another memory of the Joker’s gleeful cruelty as he cackled over his victory.

He knows the voice, and while not gleeful and laughing, the sheer hatred of Bruce’s voice hurts more than any whack of the Joker’s crowbar.

Agony jolts him back to reality with a vicious blow to his chest. Around him is only darkness, and for a moment, he wonders if he’s been buried alive. His fingers certainly hurt enough, and his lungs are struggling for air against battered ribs. He can’t distinguish one hurt from another, real from imagined. Is the agony of his leg, splintered along the shin, a phantom pain, or is that from another lifetime, travelling back to haunt him? His head aches, and he knows the Joker cracked his skull open, but did Batman? It blurs together, past and present, and his gasps for air grow more frantic.

Light bursts into the room, accompanied by a frantic voice. Not nearly as high as the Joker’s, nor as low as Batman’s, but somewhere in between. Comforting, steady, and he recognizes the calluses along the fingertips that touch him at his side, his neck, his cheek. They’re different than his own hands or along Bruce’s, born from years of bowstrings and manual work with metal.

“Roy?” he gasps out, and the fingertips move until the hands and arms attached to them have him half encircled in an embrace, firm enough for support yet gentle enough so as not to stress his injuries.

“It’s me, Jaybird,” Roy mutters, threading his fingers through Jason’s hair. “You’re safe. You’re safe now.”

“Bruce—

“Is nowhere near here. It’s just me and you, that’s it.”

Jason shudders, and the movement draws another moan from him as his side throbs. Roy shifts a little, and Jason’s shoulder feels like someone is boring a hole into the joint, precise, sharp and constant. The light in the room is enough to spark his memory about the trip to Star City and safehouse, but the realization does little to ease the very real physical pain. His fingers and wrist ache in their splints, and just as one hurt fades, another arises to take its place. A particularly harsh gasp has him doubling over as his chest responds to the movement with pure agony, and a sob escapes him. He’s losing control over his own body.

Roy mutters something and then leaves, with Jason propped on a pillow and desperate for a full lungful of oxygen. He doesn’t understand why Roy’s leaving, because Roy has yet to do anything but stay so long as Jason asked him to, and he’s asking with everything but his words he can’t force his mouth to make.

Then Roy returns, and a sharp prick at the crook of his arm startles him. Roy resumes his place behind Jason, and Jason allows himself to melt into the security of his best friend. Slowly, his breathing eases, and so does his pain. Whatever Roy injected into him has worked.

“We’ve gotta keep your pain under control,” mutters Roy, half to himself.

“Wasn’t pain,” Jason mumbles, still focusing on his breathing. He senses Roy’s glare, his tactile disbelief. “Fine, a little that, but it was more…memories.”

“Nightmares?” asks Roy gently.

“Is it a nightmare if it really happened?”

Roy doesn’t respond to that. They both have their demons, their ghosts, and they know how tightly the two can intertwine.

The medication dulls his mind as well as his body, and soon he’s fighting to keep himself engaged in the moment. Roy eases out beneath him and sets his torso gently against the pillows, halfway sitting up.

“Not tucking me in for bed yet?”

Roy doesn’t dignify that with a response. “I think you should eat something, if you can. I picked up some soup, won’t take more than a couple minutes to reheat it.”

“As long as you didn’t make it,” he says. Roy’s ineptitude with biological mechanics extends to his cooking abilities.

Roy rolls his eyes. “How hard can soup be? You just cook things in water for enough time, and presto!”

“Might be edible, but it’s not going to be good. Now, Alfred, his soup, it always made you feel safe, invincible. Like if you drank it, then you knew you were going to be fine.”

Roy looks at him strangely. Maybe he really is high off the drugs. Or maybe it really is that strange for him to speak fondly of anything related to Bruce.

“It’s chicken noodle,” says Roy, in lieu of a proper reply. “And I looked at the label, it’s only got like two days’ worth of sodium in it, so I think you’re okay for the time being.”

“If I die again, it won’t be from a heart attack,” says Jason.

“And if I die from a heart attack, you’ll be the cause of it and not the soup,” says Roy.

Jason keeps himself awake through sheer willpower as Roy heats up dinner, or whatever meal they’re on. He assumes they have a kitchen in the safehouse, but it’ll be weeks before he’s able to use it properly. In the meantime, he’ll have to settle for Roy’s approximation of a meal.

When he sips at the soup a few minutes later, he smirks up at Roy. “Congratulations. You didn’t fuck this up.”

Roy just sits in the chair next to him, his own bowl sitting half-forgotten in his lap. “Thanks. Next time, I’ll be sure to ask your opinion on my arrow designs. One expert to another, just like now.”

Eating with his left hand is slightly awkward—he can shoot a gun or throw a punch ambidextrously with the best of them, but somehow the motor skills of eating elude him more than combat. Or maybe it’s just lingering disorientation from his head injuries and residual weakness from time spent convalescing. Once he swallows the soup, however, Jason’s stomach accepts the meal easily enough, and now that he’s over the initial fear of returned nausea, he can relax and enjoy the taste of it. The soup’s nothing special, exactly what it says on the tin whence it came, and yet, it tastes better than the similar meals he’s scrounged up over the years, huddled in various safehouses in various states of health. Maybe it’s his low expectations, given his lack of faith in Roy’s ability.

His arm tires at the same time his stomach signals the end of dinner. He’s not even halfway through the bowl, and Roy frowns at the volume still remaining.

“I’ll try more later,” he assures him.

And he means it. Despite his ribbing, he knows that Roy is trying, and this townhouse is the closest thing he’ll have to a home for the coming weeks. At the very least, Roy is now the closest he has to family.

No the soup isn’t nearly as good as Alfred’s, objectively, but substantively, in his bones, it gives him the same warmth. Given that he’s stuck in a drafty apartment in a strange city and an ever-present chill from what might be a fever developing, he’ll take that warmth in whatever form it comes.

The first week in the safehouse is both the easiest and the hardest part of their stay. On the one hand, Jason spikes another fever which sends Roy into a panic, particularly since Jason’s at risk for lung infections given his recent history for compromised breathing. He monitors Jay’s temperature constantly, checking every hour to gauge its progress. He makes a deal with himself; if the temperature spikes above 103, he’s calling Dick and arranging transport back to Bludhaven or gritting his teeth and leveraging Queen’s connections for a private hospital room in Star City. Jason seems almost determined to test him as his fever lingers in the high 102s, cresting at 102.8 for an entire day, before finally beginning its descent back down. He can’t find any source of infection and his lungs remain clear enough, so he settles without satisfaction on the explanation of a flu or other similar generic disease. Whatever it is, it saps Jason of all energy, leaving him completely drained. Other than eating and the occasional trip to the bathroom, he spends most of his time dozing fitfully. Occasionally, he peruses the stack of paperbacks that Roy had procured for two bucks from a yard sale, but reading strains his head and Jason never lasts long before he’s back to sleeping. The constant worry wears on Roy too, to the point where he thinks he might need a nice island vacation after all of this is done.

On the other hand, the illness forces Jason to rest. Jason’s not stupid, but he pushes boundaries, including those of his own body, and he knows once he recovers, it’ll be more of a battle to keep him off his feet. The extra solitary time also allows him to set up effective monitors on local law enforcement to see if anyone questioned the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of Oliver Queen’s helicopter. Turns out the Star City police hasn’t learned anything over the years. That, or Oliver Queen knows what happened and has decided to let is slide out of the generosity of his heart or some shit like that.

By the time Jason’s fever breaks for good, six days and ten years of aging later, he thinks they’re okay. For now, anyways. Jason still sleeps for much of the day over the next week, but he reads a little more before he tires too much, and he forces down more soup at mealtimes. He also participates more actively in the physical therapy Roy tries to administer. He’s no professional, but he knows enough to keep Jason’s limbs moving as much as possible. The only one which he hesitates on is the arm given the seriousness of the injuries there, but he manages the rest fairly well, and his leg gains more mobility every day. It’s progress.

They arrived on a Monday, and just over two weeks later, he comes into the room to see Jason sitting up with his good leg set on the floor and the bad one stretched out in front of him awkwardly. He’s fumbling for the crutch on the left side of the bed with his one good hand, and Roy can see the strain it puts on him to reach out like that.

“Don’t be such a moron, Jaybird,” he growls.

Jason looks up, and for the first time in days, he smiles. “Didn’t want to wait around for your lazy ass all day.”

“You’re the one who’s been sleeping for the past two weeks.”

“Go after the injured guy, it’s cool, I get it.”

Roy rolls his eyes, but steps forward to grab the crutch for him. He holds it out, but when Jason goes to take it, he hesitates. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever,” says Jason, snatching it away. He plants it firmly on the ground and uses the hand bar as leverage to lift himself up. Roy tries not to hover—really, he’s normally not this much of a hoverer, but this is his best friend who nearly died a few weeks ago and who still can’t really see out of one eye or move one arm. He thinks he’s entitled to his concern. Slowly, Jason straightens himself out. For a second, he stumbles and seems as if he might fall, but then he catches himself, and Roy ignores the grunt of pain that he emits. Either Jason will do this or he won’t.

Jason secures his balance and meets Roy’s gaze. Objectively, he still looks awful, with his right eye swollen shut, his splinted fingers sticking out of his sling, and his chest a mess of bandages and fading bruises. Roy just sees a man finally standing on his own two feet for the first time in nearly a month, and the sight is glorious to behold.

Jason meets his gaze with a haughty expression. “You going to cry on me, Harper? Like a proud papa?”

“Fuck you and your daddy issues,” says Roy. “I’m just grateful I won’t have to keep hauling your ass to the toilet.”

Jason ignores him and focuses entirely on lifting his bad leg up and over a few inches. He shifts his weight onto the leg, and Roy watches apprehensively as Jason tenses with the pressure and the leg trembles. His whole body is bound to be weak after weeks of limited physical movement, despite Roy’s attempts at therapy. The leg holds. Jason takes one step, then another, and then he’s doing a slow lap around the bedroom. Just the one, though, which takes ten minutes before the trembling grows too strong, and he doesn’t reject Roy’s hand on his back to steady down his descent back onto the bed.

“Could be better,” he says, breathing heavily. “At least it’s enough to get you off bathroom duty.”

“We’re celebrating tonight,” declares Roy.

Jason chuckles. “How? I’m not eating anything you cook, and neither of us can drink at the moment.”

“Takeout,” says Roy.

“We’ve been eating takeout,” says Jason. Not entirely true. Roy’s been eating takeout while Jason forced down reheated Campbells and other bland foods, but he’s taken more of Roy’s food the past couple of days, a sign of his appetite returning

“This’ll be nice takeout,” says Roy, and he flops down on the bed next to Jason. “Sushi or something.”

Jason lists a little to the side, and Roy snatches the pillows from the head of the bed and slides them behind Jason so his friend can lean back without too much discomfort. “I don’t know,” says Jason. “Not sure I’m up for something like that.”

Roy places his hand against Jason’s forehead. It doesn’t feel warm. “You feeling okay?”

Jason shucks off his hand, but it’s a half-hearted gesture. “A little dizzy. Not nauseous, but not…not hungry either.”

“Bad headache?”

“Yeah,” Jason admits softly. “Guess something had to take the fever’s place.”

“Your knee?”

“Knee’s not bad, but my hip,” Jason grimaces and rubs the joint. “And I don’t know why walking would do anything, but my shoulder’s on fucking fire.”

“Hey, you’ve got like fifteen broken bones in all, including your actual skull. I’d be surprised if you felt good after walking for the first time in a month.” He paused, watching Jayson’s eye flutter. “I’m going to get you one of the Vicodin and we’ll take it easy tonight.”

“As opposed to living it large like we’ve been doing?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Roy. “You want to lie down for a bit?”

“It’s probably a good idea,” says Jason, and Roy frowns. Jason really looked awful compared to five minutes ago. The little jaunt had drained him. The past month had drained him them both, but especially Jason. Even after the broken bones and ligaments healed, it would still be a while before Jason could work himself back up to full strength. Months of slow progress and the dull and sharp pains of recovery and nothing that Jason deserved in Roy’s opinion, even if the situation had been a bit of a shit-show all around. It takes a minute of awkward shifting and adjustment before Roy has Jason lying down once more. His face is pinched and pale, even after Roy hands him the Vicodin.

“You know what we need?” says Roy, the idea springing to him in a moment of true inspiration.

“Enlighten me,” mutters Jason, eyes closed. His voice is a little fuzzy now. The painkiller’s kicking in.

“We need a vacation.”

Jason doesn’t even blink. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but if it involves me moving more than fifty feet at time, you might want to postpone. Skiing’s right out”

“How about the beach?” says Roy. “Specifically the white sands around a certain Tamaranean ship we happen to know.”

Jason squints, his one open eye a little glazed, and Roy knows he doesn’t have long until he’s talking to Jason’s snores. “And why would we go there?”

Roy shrugs. “It’s safe. Won’t be any pesky other people around. Plus, that ship has some weird alien tech that could help you heal up a bit faster.”

“Maybe,” Jason sighs.

“Not for a few days. I need to work out travel and you need to rest up a bit more, make sure your fever’s gone for good.”

“Hmm,” says Jason.

Roy pats his good shoulder. Jason really had crashed quickly once he had the pills. They’d have to stay on top of the pain as Jason began moving more. “You’re pretty out of it, huh?”

Jason hums.

“You gonna remember anything I say?” he asks.

Silence, except for a soft inhale and exhale

“Next up is a proper shower, because my God, you reek,” mutters Roy.

“I heard that,” says Jason.

“Sure you did,” says Roy. He doesn’t say anything else, just sits on the edge of the bed next to Jason, listening to the beautiful sound of Jason’s steady breathing and feeling the gentle movement of the rise and fall that accompanies each breath. There are a lot of things he’s fucked up in his life, but this situation, caring for his best friend—for once he thinks he’s done good here. If there’s anything he’s learned from his experience with AA and rehab, he knows to take pride in a job well done.

He remains long after Jason descends into a peaceful rest, and it isn’t until he wakes up hours later with a crick in his neck that he realizes he had fallen asleep too.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a bit longer than I intended between updates--this chapter ended up being longer than I planned, and went in a slightly different direction. But this is it! The fic is now complete. Not exactly a nice, fluffy, happy ending, but I think it's true to where the characters might be after everything that happened, and everything being hunky dory wouldn't really fit.
> 
> Parts of this chapter (the latter half at least) borrow from dialogue/events from RHatO Annual 2. I've altered some of the dialogue and details to match my story so it's not going to be precisely the same, but those of you who've read it will recognize some of the lines.
> 
> Lastly, thank you to everyone who's read this fic, and especially to those of you who reviewed! I really appreciate feedback, and I hope you've enjoyed it all. It's been fun for me, and I'm definitely planning on writing more for this fandom. I've already signed up for two fic exchanges/challenges, so that's at least two more in the next few months :)

Dick knows he shouldn’t be surprised when he shows up at the Dr. Peterson’s clinic one day to find Jason vanished. Not even Dr. Peterson knows when they left, precisely—it was sometime during off hours—and neither Jason nor Roy left any communication about their next destination. If Dick wanted to guess, he could, but he knows that wherever Roy has taken Jason, they won’t be there for too long either. When healthy, Jason is a nomad, flitting around the country and only gravitating towards Gotham. Without Gotham as an option, there’s no telling where he’ll settle next.

The swift, unemotional disappearance shouldn’t bother him, and yet he can’t help the pang of…regret? Anger? Resigned disappointment? He can’t quite put his finger on the emotions he’s feeling, nor on the ones he ought to be feeling, even if the two don’t quite align. He can’t expect more given the circumstances; Jason never invited Dick into the situation, so by his logic, he owes Dick no explanation for his abrupt departure.

Still Dick had hoped, as he always hopes, but as usual, life has little sympathy for his naïve wishing.

His life returns to normal, which is to say, busy enough to distract him from any personal matters if he wishes. He signs onto a complicated case—he’s not a detective yet, but even the dullest of the force recognize his potential, it’s only a matter of time—and extends his patrols each night. He visits Dr. Peterson’s clinic again; unsurprisingly, Jason is still gone. He checks every other hospital in Bludhaven on the off chance that Jason’s condition has worsened; he’s both relieved and frustrated to find the halls and records of the hospitals filled with strangers.

He also avoids his family, though not necessarily intentionally. When he’s in Bludhaven, he usually operates solo, and with the rest of them in Gotham, he’s not in constant contact over the course of the night. He hears from Babs as Oracle, but even then, their conversations are usually brief check-ins about his status. He knows he’ll need to head to Gotham again at some point soon. Alfred’s softly disappointed gaze always eats away at him like high molar hydrochloric acid whenever he stays away for too long. Going back means seeing Bruce, and seeing Tim and Damian and he’s just not sure what he’s going to say to all of them.

His control over the situation is wrested rapidly away from him on what should have been a dull, routine patrol more than a week after Jason and Roy hightailed it out of the city. It should be _easy_. The guys he’s fighting are amateurs, good at throwing a hard punch but awful at blocking or using any other part of their body in the fight. It should be easy, even though there are eight of them, each of them nondescript thugs who shouldn’t mean anything to Dick, nothing at all, except one of them catches the light, and his face—it’s just like Jason’s, he thinks it’s Jason for a moment, the resemblance is so striking, or maybe he’s just exhausted and he can’t—

_Whack_.

A hard punch to the jaw sends Dick reeling back. He staggers against the wall of the alley, his vision wavering, and the men he’s facing might not be smart, but there are eight of them, and each of them smells blood.

Two of them pin his shoulders against the wall, so Dick kicks up with both of his feet, intending to use the leverage to flip over and take them down with them, but two of the others grab his feet mid-air and slam him into the asphalt. His shoulder creaks, his head throbs. The impact stuns him and his escrima sticks clatter from his hands. He’s barely even aware of his surroundings enough to sense the boot coming towards him until it hits his stomach, forcing air to evacuate from his lungs in a whoosh. Before he can catch his breath, another boot slams into his side. The pain from that kick is sharp, and it floods his system with adrenaline and endorphins, just enough that when the next kick comes, he can grab the man’s foot and throw him to the ground, taking one of the other thugs with him.

The chaos is just enough to let him wriggle out from beneath the grip of the man holding him down, and he unleashes a spinning kick that cracks another one’s jaw. The man howls in pain, and Dick uses that distraction to grab an arm mid-punch and twist it until he has the man on his knees just long enough to snap a tie around his wrists. Handy little Wayne-invention, that.

Now it’s five against one, with three on the ground in various states of pain or unconsciousness, and several others are hurt. He allows them to take the first move, and two are stupid enough to charge at him. He jumps up, smacking their heads together as he handsprings off of their crowns, and both men collapse.

“Now who said two heads are better than one?” he quips, snapping ties around their wrists as well. The three remaining get the message. With more coordination than he thought possible from them, they rush him from different angles, one going high, two going low, and he has to twist mid-air to avoid taking a fist to his Adam’s apple. He sweeps the leg out from one of them as he lands and stuns the man with the escrima stick he snatches from the ground. He finds his other stick, and now it’s two against one, and he’s armed.

He approaches the shorter of the two, who starts to retreat in fear. Dick tuts. “Not so fast,” he says, and flips over the man and pulls him to the ground shoulder first as he descends. The man’s shoulder slips out of joint with an unpleasant jolt beneath Dick’s fingers. He tases him for good measure. A foot comes at his face and he bends back to avoid it before snapping up and rolling away to avoid the next punch. He aims his stick at his attacker, the last of them, and prepares to send a few hundred volts into his chest when he catches a glimpse of the man’s face. It’s the one from before, the one like Jason, and his hesitation is enough to allow the man to catch him with a left hook. Dick grabs the next fist which comes his way, but he must be concussed, otherwise there’s no way he would miss the knee that slams into his chest, right where he’d been kicked before. A rib gives way beneath the knee, and he gasps.

Another fist to the face, another knee to his torso, this one just above his hip, and he finally gains enough awareness to shove his stick into the man’s belly. The electricity seizes him and sends careening backwards. Dick gives him another jolt to be safe.

His head spins as he surveys the carnage around him. He steadies himself with a deep inhale, which aggravates his rib, and resigns himself to painful, graceless cleanup.

He jolts those stirring or moving enough to threaten to rise again and binds their limbs with blurry vision and trembling hands. When he bends down to tie down the ankles of the one whose shoulder he dislocated, he staggers and has to rest on his knuckles for a moment until his eyes can focus. The man whose jaw he’d cracked gains enough awareness as he’s being bound to spit up a mouthful of blood onto Dick’s sleeve, and Dick can’t react in time to avoid him.

He approaches his last attacker, who’s still twitching a little from the shock. Once he ties the man up, he drags him out of the shadows and into the faint light of the full moon and reflected beam of a streetlight. Now that he sees the man fully, the resemblance to Jason isn’t nearly as close as he’d thought. They share the same jawline, the same black hair, but this man’s nose is crooked, his face wider. When he blinks stupidly up at Dick, his eyes are brown.

Dick fires his grapple and lets the wire carry him up to the roof of the apartment building to the left of the alley.

The sensation of being lifted through the air leaves him nauseous and with a new layer of weight on his head. He collapses slowly to the ground, easing his fall away from his bad side, but the impact still hurts his head, and bile rises in his throat. He closes his eyes, hoping it will tamp down the urge to vomit. When he attempts to rise, the combination of his rib and his head sends him right back down.

If he lies here for a while, he’ll likely regain enough strength to stagger back to his apartment and collapse on the couch for the next day or so. He’ll down some ibuprofen and water and try to keep it down as he sits miserably alone, unable to breath deeply enough to relieve the pain in his head without exacerbating the pain in his side.

It’s atrocious, and it something he’s done before on several occasions when his family were unavailable, or when he didn’t want to talk to them. Now is definitely one of these times.

“Nightwing, do you copy?”

Oracle. The omnipresent, mostly for good, but sometimes for worse. Nothing like having an ex-girlfriend (even one he still cared for deeply) on call in his ear.

“I’m here,” he says.

“Status?” she asks.

“About to head in for the night. Might want to call in some police to my position soon. I’ve left a few presents gift-wrapped for them.”

“Good to know,” she says. “Do you have time for a quick stop on the way?”

Almost certainly not. He’ll be lucky if it takes him an hour to get back to his place between the breaks he’ll need to keep from throwing up or passing out.

“How urgent are we talking?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“A report of an armed robbery attempt—police are on the scene, but your presence would certainly help the situation.”

“Probably not tonight, O,” he says softly. “I’m a little…I’m a little tired.”

“Nightwing?” Her voice has urgency to it now. “Are you hurt?”

Dick barely has the time to roll over to his side as the vomit comes. Heaving is murder on his side, and his rib skewers his lung with each muscle contraction. Oracles speaks into his ear, but he can’t make out her words, not until the fit has passed and he’s dragged himself far enough away from the puddle of sick that the scent won’t make him puke again.

“Hit my head,” he says, cutting off her stream of questions. “It’s fine.”

They’ve had these conversations before. She’ll say something like “your definition of fine in no way intersects with the actual meaning of the word” and he’ll reply that language is fluid and that no, he really is okay, by any definition of the word. Variations on a theme, like that symphony Bruce dragged him to as a child.

“I’m sending someone. Don’t move,” she says. He guesses they’re skipping the first part tonight.

“Sure,” he says.

“Keep talking to me, N,” she says. “What happened?”

He explains the situation, the eight men, the way they lingered around the block long enough for Dick to overhear their plans to hold up the bodega just like they held up the one the week before. Dick missed that one, being occupied with Jason-watching duty. He couldn’t let it happen again. Whenever he fades off, Oracle’s back in his ear, insisting he speak, asking for more details than she would ever need to know.

The chattering in his ear almost prevents him from noticing the swish and swoop of a cape and the thunk of heavy boots on the rooftop. Almost.

“B,” he says. He closes his eyes. “O, you didn’t tell me you were sending Batman.”

“I volunteered.” Bruce’s voice rumbles deep in his chest, growls with faint disapproval, whether of Dick or of the situation he can’t decipher, not when his head aches like someone dropped an anvil on it. “Can you stand?”

Dick grunts, and Batman helps lift him off the ground while setting his feet gently on concrete. Dick sways, then jolts when Bruce’s hand grips his side

“Where else are you hurt?”

“Broken rib,” he mutters. “Stupid.”

“Hmm,” says Bruce, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Anything else?”

“A few bruises,” he says, then flexes his body, searching for other ailments. “Shoulder’s sore.” Best to be honest here, or Babs and Bruce will ream him out later.

Batman takes him at his word, and the next few minutes are spent in painful embarrassment as he clutches onto Bruce to avoid keeling over as they descend the fire escape. Batman supports most of his weight, but the movement hurts with no good way to avoid it. When they jump the final few feet, Dick’s almost certain he’s going to vomit again. With his eyes closed to stop the spinning, he doesn’t really know what’s happening until he feels familiar cool leather beneath his skin. They’re in the Batmobile, which means that Bruce is almost certainly taking him back to Gotham.

It seems Dick’s getting his family reunion whether he likes it or not.

They ride back silently, the hum of the car punctuated only by Bruce’s occasional check on Dick’s consciousness. Dick responds briefly to each one. He spends most of his energy on suppressing the nausea building once again in his gut.

Bruce practically lifts Dick out of the car when they reach the Cave, and he deposits him gently onto one of the medical beds. Dick shifts restlessly, exhausted and frustrated and itching to escape, but he knows he wouldn’t make it past the Cave entrance, if even that far.

“Welcome back, Master Dick.”

At the sound of Alfred’s voice, Dick opens his eyes wide, then quickly squints as the light overwhelms him. “Hey, Alfred.”

“It has been some time. I do wish you were visiting under better circumstances, but is always good to see you.”

“Thanks,” he says.

Alfred’s presence relaxes him. Even when Alfred’s fingers prod at bruises and scrapes and force him to follow them with eyes that don’t really want to focus on anything, much less a moving object, Alfred’s voice is steady and soothing. Practical and no-nonsense, something Dick can trust not to lie to him or hide ulterior motives.

He swears when Alfred shines the penlight in his eyes and takes Alfred’s admonishment in stride. Mostly, he just wants to sleep.

“You have a moderate concussion,” says Alfred at last, snapping off his rubber gloves. He just finished applying a butterfly bandage to a gash on Dick’s temple, completing his clean up of Dick’s face. “Just the x-rays now, and we’ll have you off to bed.”

Predictably, Alfred takes an x-ray of Dick’s chest. He broke a rib after all, best to confirm it and ensure it wasn’t dangerously close to poking through his skin or lung. He’s more surprised when Alfred places the machine over his head.

“What’re you doing that for?” he asks, voice slurring a little. He’s so tired, he just wants his bed.

“Checking for a skull fracture,” says Alfred. “I doubt I’ll find one, but it is better to be safe. Such injuries are not to be trifled with.”

“Hmm,” says Dick. He knows that, of course. He’d told Jason as much that first day he woke up in an attempt to keep him in bed. “Jason had one, you know.”

To his credit, Alfred’s reply is only a second late. “What did he have, Master Dick?”

“Broke his skull,” he says. “He’s okay now. At least I think he is. Haven’t seen him all week.”

“I didn’t realize you’d been in contact with Master Jason.”

“Helped him,” says Dick. “Had to. He could’ve died.”

“Oh,” says Alfred simply. Dick can’t tell from Alfred’s voice if he’s truly surprised or not, and the x-ray machine blocks any view of Alfred’s face. When the x-ray machine pulls back, Dick’s blurry vision doesn’t provide much insight into Alfred’s mood. Someone has also dimmed the lights, making it harder to see, even if Dick’s headache appreciates the gesture. Dick waits patiently while the x-rays develop, dozing lightly against the cot. Alfred places an ice pack against his sore shoulder and another across his rib. He’ll still feel like ground meat tomorrow, but maybe a little less pulverized.

He hears Alfred’s footsteps and opens his eyes. Alfred bears a small, mildly grim smile. “Your self-diagnosis was correct. Quite the skill you’ve developed.”

“Thanks Alf,” he says. “Can I go to bed now?”

“Of course. I’ll be by in two hours to check on you.”

The trudge out of the cave and up the manor stairs into Dick’s old room is long and painful. Even with Alfred’s steadying hand, Dick’s legs tremble as they ascend, and he all but collapses on the bed once they’re there. Alfred hands him a sleepshirt and helps him pull his arms through and does the same with his legs. By the time he switches off the light, Dick is fast asleep.

He doesn’t remember Alfred waking him two hours later, nor the time after. He is, however, fully aware when he awakens to Bruce’s grim face staring over him.

“It’s 2017. My name’s Richard Grayson. I go by Dick. Bruce Wayne is Batman.” He recites the words automatically. He’s had enough concussions to know what’s needed of him.

Bruce nods, leans back in the chair next to the bed. From the way he sits, he intends on staying there for a while.

“Do you need something more from me?” he asks wearily. “I was probably just going back to sleep for another hour or two.” He’s not lying—he’s still exhausted, and trying to focus on Bruce’s face isn’t doing wonders for the ache that throbs in his head with each pulse of his heart.

“I understand you were in contact with Jason recently.”

Oh, so _that’s_ where they’re going, and of course Bruce wants to have this conversation while Dick is still muddling through his own ailments. Despite the twinge in his chest, Dick levers himself up, assumes a more upright position on the bed. He’s not taking this conversation lying down, in either sense.

“Sure, if by contact you mean watching over him while he was in the hospital.” Dick watches Bruce, who doesn’t even blink at the statement. “I don’t know where he is now, if that’s what you’re asking. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“As long as he’s not in Gotham, he’s free to do as he wishes.”

Maybe the last night has worn on Dick, maybe the past week, or past two weeks have, but all Dick can do is sputter in disbelief. “Is that it? Do you want to know anything else about him? Like how close you came to killing him?”

Bruce frowns. “I would never have done that.”

He laughs hollowly, then clutches his side when it complains. “By the time I saw him, he was being treated for a collapsed lung and a fractured skull, among other things. It doesn’t matter if you have the best possible doctor in the world, things can always go wrong with injuries like that. You can’t guarantee survival.”

“And I would have ensured that he received that care, had Roy not taken him away.”

“And then what, kicked him out the minute he could sit up? Let him wake up alone, or worse, right next to the man who put him there?”

“He broke the rules, Dick,” says Bruce. “Actions have consequences.”

Something in the flat, matter-of-fact tone of his adoptive father breaks the dam inside of him. “So do yours, Bruce! So do yours! You think what you did is okay?”

“I’ve done far worse before.”

“To criminals! Jason is your son. It doesn’t matter if the paperwork’s void at this point, you adopted him, and you took on responsibility for him, and whatever happens, you don’t beat him to the ground!”

“What would have had me do?” Bruce has raised his voice now. Good. “He’s out of control. He could have outed us all on national television. He nearly killed someone, and it’s only by sheer dumb luck that he didn’t! I tried other methods, but I won’t abide by anyone, even him, running rampant through the streets on a killing spree. He had to be stopped.”

“First of all,” says Dick, and he can’t believe he’s going to say this, but they’re both emotional and it’s easy for hyperbole to creep in. “I don’t like what he did, but killing one person, the man responsible for your father’s death, is not a killing spree. It’s different than it was when he first came back. It is,” he insists, when Bruce opens his mouth to argue. “It is, and you know that’s true. And secondly, he fired a blank.”

Bruce’s mouth opens, then closes. If you didn’t know him well, you wouldn’t notice, but Dick knows him better than anyone save Alfred—he was there for the early years of Batman, when Bruce was unsure about the role of Batman and his role as father-figure, he’s seen parts of Bruce that the rest of his brothers never have—and Bruce is genuinely shocked.

“I don’t know why,” continues Dick. “He wouldn’t tell me, and he certainly wouldn’t tell you if you asked, but he didn’t break any rule.”

“He must have known what I would think,” says Bruce, and Dick thinks he’s talking more to himself. “He knew that.”

“He knew you would be mad, but I don’t think he thought you’d nearly kill him,” says Dick flatly. “He thought he’d have more time to explain.”

Dick lets Bruce stew in the revelation for a minute. He uses the time to ease back against the soft cushion of the pillow and pinch the bridge of his nose as if it he could dispel the headache still raging inside. Each inhale hurts, and all of this talking and yelling only increases the pain. He’s not going to last much longer.

Bruce swallows, works his tongue around his mouth and teeth. “I lost my temper.”

“You lost _control_ ,” says Dick. “You lost control and I don’t know what you told Damian or Alfred or the others, but I bet they don’t know the full truth. Damian certainly doesn’t—he called me the other day, and he had no idea what state Jason was in.”

Bruce leans back in his chair, straightens his shoulders. “I’ll tell Damian.”

“You’ll tell everyone. You explain yourself to them, and then we can see where we go from there.” Dick fixes Bruce with his most intent gaze. “Damian deserves better. He deserves a father who takes care of his sons, even at their worst. I don’t like what Jason did—most of what he’s done, really—but he’s still my brother, and that matters to me. It should matter to you too.”

“Of course it matters. And part of being a father is knowing when to draw a line. Jason can’t work as Red Hood in Gotham, but if it were anyone else, he’d be in prison.”

“That’s a low bar,” says Dick. “Too low.”

He leans forward, and it’s a mistake. The pain from his rib shoots across his chest, and the headache is too much to bear. He collapses backward, caving in on himself, too tired, too fed up with his entire family to deal with the situation anymore.

“I’ll get Alfred,” says Bruce, and then he leaves, and Dick doesn’t call him back. When Alfred comes in with pills and a glass of water, Dick takes the medicine wordlessly. Alfred lets him lie back in silence, catching his breath, regaining his equilibrium.

“I’d feel more comfortable if you stayed here for another day, Master Dick,” says Alfred. “But if you wish to return to Bludhaven, I can make arrangements.”

“Doesn’t matter,” says Dick wearily, flopping his arm over his eyes. “It won’t change a thing.”

“No, I suppose not,” says Alfred. “May I recommend that you do stay, at least for lunch? I find the world much easier to face with a full stomach.”

“Thank you, Alfred,” says Dick. He cracks his eyes open. “Jason’s going to be okay.” He means it as a statement, but it comes out more as a question, a search for reassurance.

“Your brother is quite resilient,” says Alfred. “He’s faced far more in his young life than most ever will. Most of this family has.” His expression softens. “But thank you for informing me. It was good to hear news of him.”

Alfred leaves him shortly thereafter, allowing Dick the sleep that he needs. Despite his body’s clear exhaustion, he lies awake for a long time. He resolves to return to Bludhaven today, even if he dreads the trip back in his condition.

He does stay for lunch, though. Alfred deserves at least that much.

Arriving back on the island is liking stepping back in time. His time with Roy and Kory had been strange, to say the least, but he’d enjoyed much of it, and he’d liked having a little family of his own for a time. He hopes Kory is doing well—neither he nor Roy have heard anything from in her months.

Along with the nostalgia, the island brings a renewed sense of purpose. It reminds him of his new family, of Artemis and Bizarro, and what he owes to them the moment he’s well enough to think beyond the immediate physical needs of his body.

What he owes Roy now is to get better. Baby steps.

They’re six weeks past Bruce’s attack when they step foot on crystalline sand, and he’s trying to focus on the improvement. He no longer needs a crutch to walk, and a very discreet urgent care doctor in Star City removed the cast from his wrist and the splints from his fingers after confirming they’d healed sufficiently, meaning that he can at least use the fingers a little. That’s not to say that he feels good, though. He awakens each morning to painful, stiff limbs and a bout of dizziness and aching in his head that forces him to lie in bed for several minutes before inching his way upward, pausing if the sensation overwhelms him. One eye remains stubbornly swollen shut. When he breathes deeply, his chest no longer feels like he’s inhaling shards of glass, but the motion is hardly pain-free. Once he’s up, he limps when he walks, and he needs to keep his arm in a sling to stabilize his shoulder, meaning that the improvement from freeing his fingers and hand is far more limited than he’d like.

Still, he appreciates the fresh air and the smell of saltwater and the pure, unadulterated sunshine. Even on its best days, Gotham’s beauty is marred by its stinking underbelly. You can’t look at the shining towers of Wayne industry without seeing the smudges of pollution, can’t enjoy the waterfront without the noxious odor of sewage and shipping waste. When he was a child, he never dreamed of stepping foot on a place like this island.

The trip over wiped him out entirely, so he doesn’t protest when Roy immediately guides him across the beach towards the old living quarters of the ship. They’re not much, especially not when compared to the treasure trove of alien tech within, but there’s a bed and sheets and a shower, and right now, Jason can’t really ask for more.

Jason goes straight from standing to lying down, and Roy sits on the edge of the bed as he’s been wont to do these past weeks.

“Feeling okay, Jaybird?” Roy asks.

“No worse than usual,” says Jason.

“Cool, well, I’m going to get dinner going then. Seeing as we’re going to be takeout free.”

Roy’s cooking has improved slightly, but not nearly enough for Jason to fully trust him. Still, they brought mostly prepared food, enough for a month if need be, and Roy can probably handle that.

He dozes while Roy makes the meal. Roy’s entrance startles him awake When Roy approaches the bed with two bowls in hand, Jason shakes his head. “I’m not eating in bed.”

Roy frowns. “Jay—

“If I can make it out of bed, then I want to eat somewhere else. Don’t need to ruin the sheets.”

Roy shrugs, for which Jason’s grateful. They’ve fought more important battles than this throughout his recovery. Still, Jason pointedly ignores Roy’s stare as he slowly raises his body up from the bed. The dizziness isn’t horrible this time, nor is the headache, and when he comes to his feet, he barely sways at all. “See?” he says. “Piece of cake.”

Roy just rolls his eyes. Jason limps after him as he exits the room and meanders down the hall until they turn into a small kitchenette type area. It’s not much, but it works. Roy places both bowls on the table in the center of the room and he holds off from eating until Jason is well and truly settled in the chair.

The meal is spaghetti and meatballs, something easy to eat one-handed as always. Roy slurps his noodles up, and the noise echoes amid the silence. Roy finishes first too—much easier to eat without an arm in a sling.

“Do you ever wonder where she is?” Roy muses, eyes wandering around the little room.

“Kory?” Jason asks. Roy nods. “On Tamaran, I suppose.”

“She could be somewhere else, though. On another planet, fighting invaders or on a diplomatic mission.”

“She could be,” he says. “I haven’t really heard anything from her in a while.”

Not since they parted. Jason knows Roy still holds more tightly onto their connection than he does, especially, it seems, since the two of them stopped teaming up. Jason’s time with Artemis and Bizarro has allowed him to function, even if he still misses Roy. He knows Roy’s been a bit lonely.

Roy senses his hesitation, and in a rare display of tact, changes the topic of conversation. “Did she ever teach you how to use any of the tech? To heal yourself, I mean.”

Jason thinks back to his first time on the island, waking up in a hazy world of pain with machines plugged into him, pumping him full of some strange liquid and shooting little electrical pulses through his muscles. When he gained more clarity, he tried to understand the technology which helped him heal far faster than he ever should have from his injuries back then. He never asked her about it specifically, though.

“I can try to figure it out, I guess.”

Roy fiddles with his fork, stirring it absentmindedly around his empty bowl. “You don’t have to use it, of course, I just thought—

“It’s a good idea,” says Jason. “I’ll look into it.”

He knows he’s being ridiculous, but the thought of using it somehow feels like cheating. Like he’s not strong enough on his own. All his life, up until that one fateful day in Sarajevo, he picked himself whenever he fell and he along kept himself going. Bruce changed things, of course, but Jason relished any independence he earned as Robin. He loved that he could hold his own against superpowered villains and men twice his size.

Dying changed everything, and so did the Pit, and ever since he emerged from that glowing green cesspool, his body has never felt quite the same, quite his own. Kory helped him without his knowledge, and he’s not stupid enough to lack gratitude for her help, but he still can’t fully chase the notion that he needs to rely on what he always has: his own personal strength. The Joker and the Pit took so many things away from him, but they couldn’t change his resilience, his fighting instinct.

“Well, let me know if you want an extra pair of eyes. I may not have seen it in action, but I can muddle my way through with the best of them.”

“Let me try muddling first,” says Jason.

“Whatever you want, Jaybird,” says Roy. “Whatever you need.”

Several days after arriving on the island, Jason wakes up earlier than usual, far before Roy, and tiptoes as quietly as he can to the closet they’d repurposed as their supply center. He rummages through various weapons, armor and other pieces of gear before he finds what he needs: a handgun. 0.22 caliber, because when you haven’t shot a weapon in a month and half and you’re coming off injury, it’s always good to start small. He stashes some of the bullets in the crook of sling for safekeeping.

Still walking off the morning stiffness in his knee and hip, he limps down to the beach and begins to search for a suitable target. Nothing that will deflect a bullet—the last thing he needs is a gunshot wound on top of everything else—and something of suitable size. In the end, he settles on the dumb coconut Roy had carved a face into the other evening. Its smiley, goofy face irritates him, and he’ll derive satisfaction from shooting it out.

He places it on a stump and paces back, allowing himself a closer shot than normal. He still can barely see through his right eye, so his depth perception isn’t what it ought to be. It takes him a minute longer than normal to load the gun with his bum arm, but eventually he has it fully loaded

As he lifts the weapon, he’s reminded of his first time firing a gun. He’d been nine years old, scrawny but quick, and he’d picked up a handgun off of a thug he’d just knocked out with his trusty tire iron. After scuttling away from the alley for a slightly safer location, he’d held the thing in his hands like it burned hot in his hand—not fully aflame, but something to handle with care. He’d seen the damage a bullet could do, and if he hurt himself alone in this alley, he could very well die.

He knew the basic mechanics of a gun from a library book he read once. He never checked out a book, but he still sat in the corner of the second floor and flipped through pages of diagrams and pictures, fascinated by the mechanics of it all. Though he’d never held one before, that knowledge was enough to let him check the weapon and find three bullets remaining. After disabling the safety, he aimed at a trash bag abandoned in the corner of the street. It would be soft enough to avoid deflecting his shot back at him. His arm shook as he raised the gun, and when he fired, the kickback sent him flying straight into the wall behind him.

A dog howled in the distance, and someone in the apartment building shouted. Lights flicked on, and Jason knew he needed to escape, and quickly. He clambered to his feet and shot through the alley, vaulting over the fence at the end. By the time he was two blocks away, he realized he’d left the gun there. He didn’t even know if he hit his target.

Now, Jason lifts the gun with his left hand and regards the minute shake of his hand with dismay—it’s not enough to attract most people’s attention, but when it comes to shooting, even a small tremor is enough to ruin a shot. When he focuses his vision, his eyesight blurs, and a killer headache threatens at this temple. He ignores all of that. He has to do this. He needs to know that he can.

He fires…

…and he falls. The recoil, small as it is, shoots bolts of pain through his chest and head, and the impact on the sand stuns him and reawakens the dulled agony in his shoulder. He lies there, breathing, regaining control of himself.

Eventually—a minute or five minutes later, he can’t tell—he lifts his head up just enough to look past his toes and there he sees it: the coconut, dumb smile still intact as if to mock him and his disfunction.

Fuck. He’s still a long way from healed.

“You know, when I told you to take it easy and lie down, I thought you’d do it on a bed.”

Of course the gunshot had drawn Roy down to the beach, regardless of the early hour. When Jason flops back, he sees Roy’s smiling face with only a hint of concern in his eyes.

“Be a doll and hand me my gun,” he says, syrupy smooth.

“Not a chance,” says Roy. He crouches down, offers his hand. “You good to stand?”

“Course,” Jason says.

He is good to stand, but only after another minute while the dizziness eases, and even then, he needs to lean far more on Roy than he has in weeks. He doesn’t think he reinjured his leg, but the fall has sharpened the residual pain in his joints. When he glances over his shoulder, the coconut stares mockingly back.

“Did you hit it?” asks Roy casually as they begin a slow march back to the ship.

“No,” he grumbles. Roy knows this of course—he’s just being difficult.

“Were you close?”

“I don’t know,” he says. Probably not, he thinks.

“You could’ve popped a stitch in your back,” says Roy as they approach the entrance of the ship. “I should check.”

“They’re almost better,” he says, which is true, but they would be entirely better if he hadn’t reopened them multiple times throughout recovery.

When they reach the entrance, he pulls away. The ache in his leg has receded, even if the headache has not. “I’m fine, Roy. Just needed to see if I could it.”

“Okay,” says Roy. “Suit yourself. I’m getting coffee now. You want any?”

“No thanks,” he says. “I have something I need to do.”

Surprisingly, the ship’s security recognizes him. The living quarters were one thing, but the main hull where Kory stored all of her tech and navigation, that was always going to be a question. Kory’s hologram greets him, a pale imitation of the real thing, and he proceeds steadily until he reaches the ship controls.

“Find Artemis and Bizarro.”

“Location unknown.”

He swears. These location devices are top notch, better than anything Batman ever owned. If it can’t locate his friends, then his chances of finding them himself are slim.

“Search everywhere,” he insists, and the computer returns the same negative response.

“Fuck,” he swears, and he falls back into the chair by the control station, wincing when his shoulder hits the head of the chair.

They’re gone, beyond the known multiverse, and Jason has to believe that they’re not dead, he has to. He’s already lost so many families, he’s not ready to lose the one he’s built, any more than he’s ready to lose Roy. 

He eyes the tech around him, some of which is still as alien to him as its origins. But not all of it. Eventually, he spots what he needs, the same machine Kory once used to bring him back from the brink. If it worked once, he’ll make it work again.

He looks down at his body—the lingering bruises, the bandages hiding stitches, the sling still keeping his arm close to his chest—and he knows it’s time to move on to a place far, far from Gotham. Time to find a new home.


End file.
